My Toy Story Conspiracy Theory

There are a lot of things I could worry about. Those floods in the Midwest. Oil is around $140 a barrel. We hit the one million mark in home foreclosures recently. Iran. Is Lindsay Lohan going to get her life back on track? But right now, my daily ire is aimed at a toy called Boingee Bubbles.

It was made by a company called Imperial Toy, which may be the finest toy company in the world. It's been around since 1969; they're apparently a well established business that specializes in making toys that involve bubbles. I know next to nothing about the company, and right now, I really don't care to know much. All I know is that this one toy that their name is behind, this one toy that my wife bought yesterday at a Kroger for $6.99, is either the one defective Boingee Bubbles of an otherwise bodacious bunch, or possibly, it's just a lousy product.

It is admittedly kind of a cheap shot to write some commentary and take a company to task in a public forum rather than call up their operator on the phone and asking for my money back. But I'm just fed up, from years of occasionally buying products from a variety of companies and hitting some sort of anti-jackpot of doom.

And, yes, we only paid $6.99, but it's not like we paid that price for a stereo and then are stunned to find that it doesn't actually play music. This is a toy. Shouldn't it work -- at least once?

My wife bought this Boingee Bubbles, some toy-contraption with a fan and "wands." You dip this fan with bubble wands into a tray of bubble soap, and then you press the battery-operated toy, and the fan spins, and the fun begins.