Shopping for a 6-year-old's birthday

is surprisingly fun. Especially when it's hot outside, but the intermittent threat of passing rain showers rules the beach out as a viable option. The following is a photo-essay about me and my friend's shopping trip to Toys R Us and 99 Cent Stuff. (my friend's and mine? What's the proper grammatical phrasing there?) I didn't photograph the actual things we bought for the 6-year-old, but I did buy myself a few items ... can you guess which things I bought??


What could be better on a hot day like today than shooting mini marshmallows at friends?! It's a food fight with weaponry!! (Random Personal Trivia: I have never been in a food fight and it's a secret wish of mine to have one.)


I'm a fan of Yo Gabba Gabba (with guests like The Shins, Jack Black, The Roots, Amy Sedaris and Elijah Wood and episodes directed by Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite fame). This Magic Dance Hat which plays music when you move your head around (preferably as you do the puppet master) is AH-MAZE-ING. In fact, I want to be DJ Lance Rock for halloween.

A Project Runway fashion illustration toy thing! I used to love these when I was little!!


I will admit it, I was a HUGE Barbie fanatic when I was a kid. I had the Corvette, a three story mansion with an elevator, and my favorite was my Jasmine Barbie (from Aladdin). I feel like I should be against Barbie because it fucks with your self-image and reinforces gender stereotypes and blah blah blah. But when I walked into the Barbie aisle, my heart stopped for a second. Mermaid + Barbie. swoon.


Dude! Skipper is a crunchy-granola, back-packy nature type who BLOGS! hahahahaha Her thought bubble says "That's going in my nature blog!"


Although I love Barbie and I was generally a pretty girly-girl, a lot of my toys were hand-me-downs and I have an older brother, so I had equal love for stuff like guns and toy tractors. This particular Nerf blasting thing with three guns in one is pretty awesome. Three darts per second!!

Moon Shoes!!! They fit up to a men's size 9! They're kid-powered fun! They're also $30! WTF?


Ah, the elusive Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. Prominently displayed to mock us and our now-functioning air conditioner at work.


There is so much wrong with this product. Pushing the whole princess meme on little girls is bad enough as it is, but associating the princesses with a snack, and one that is SO CONCERNED with calories? And look at Belle's waist! It's been whittled down to nothing! Even Dita can't shrink her middle like that. Not to mention that if you want your daughter to eat healthily, you should probably avoid Disney-sponsored chocolate snacks made out of chemicals and just give her a mango or some carrots. UGH.

Let's move on to the next stop of the day. 99 Cent Stuff. Here's where it gets good.


Hey look! Cheap tennis shoes! That are actually snow boots!


Mmmmm ... Pocky. Oh, no. Tricky. How appropriately-named.

Hannah Montana ankle socks that say Secret Star.


This "Senior New Type" table cloth, so you know, has "No Poison, No Taste." So don't worry if grandma tries to take a bite out of it.


We considered buying this for the 6-year-old. I mean, look at how FUN it is! It's a Robin Hood play set! You get a cardboard head of Robin Hood with creepy blue eyes ... and then you play with it. Because there's nothing else included.

This is Joy-Doh. Like Play-Doh, but better, because when you give this to a child you let them know that they can try to change their image. Be sure to include some 80 Calorie Princess snacks when you gift this.


Is this action figure a man or a woman? We don't know! But we do know that if we were to start a L patron action figure line, this could definitely be the first one.


Why not? From the back: "Alone for the evening? Give yourself over to Squeeze Solitaire, where getting down to nothing is harder than you imagined."


If you were to buy yourself a frisbee, wouldn't you pass over the others in favor of a 2008 one from Denver?

Can anyone explain this to me? Is it a really bad joke about the fact that you can legally go to war when you turn 18 and get your legs blown off by a roadside bomb or something?

So ideal for the Sniper Sex Therapist ...


So ideal for all the rest of them.

On the one hand we have 80 Calorie Princess Snacks, on the other? Chubby Kids Soda. Why lie to yourself?