Let Us Give Thanks For Toys and Tall Ladies
Let Us Give Thanks For Toys and Tall Ladies
Super Toys Last All Thanksgiving Long
November 13, 2018
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of year.
Unless you're a turkey, pig or a duck or a dude who's still walking around in his Halloween costume and his costume is a creature that's part turkey, part pig and part duck.
A Turpigduck costume would certainly one day end up in the Toy Hall of Fame, and in probably in a few police lineups as well.
This year's inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame are Uno, pinball and the Magic 8 Ball.
Uno is a great game if you're an eight-year-old girl or a funeral director as the guy who used to sell the game operated a funeral parlor in Joliet, Illinois. This is the stuff of legend and legends don't lie.
The Magic 8 Ball is a liquid-filled ball, which tells fortunes by way of a floating 20-sided die. We remember the early days of the World Wide Web when some genius actually pointed a camera at a real Magic 8 Ball and you could ask it questions. The Internet has yet to produce anything more satisfying.
The Magic 8 Ball was introduced in 1946, a year after the war, and has probably started a million battles since. God only knows how many have suffered.
Then there's pinball, the greatest thing this side of pachinko.
The Associated Press quotes the International Flipper Pinball Association as saying that the grand old game of bowling alleys and lucky basements is making the greatest comeback since Lazarus, noting that were 500 pinball players in 50 competitions worldwide in 2006. In 2017, more than 55,000 players competed in 4,500 competitions.
Pinball, like former Oakland Raiders punter Ray Guy, deserved a spot in the Hall of Fame much, much earlier.
Ray Guy was such a good punter he could have made the Hall of Fame even if he punted while dressed as a Turpigduck.
How many people per year visit both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the National Toy Hall of Fame? The football hall is in Canton, Ohio. The toys are in Rochester, New York which is near the top of the list of places we've never been to but really think we'd like to live.
You know who belongs in both the Football Hall of Fame and the Toy Hall of Fame? Super Toe.
Super Toe had the best foot of any guy not named Ray Guy. Just bop that little fella on the head and he could kick that plastic football clear across the family room, through the kitchen and into the dining room where it crashed into Aunt Masie's soup and splashed her right in the face and she screamed and there was a fight and a fire then lots of laughter and drinking and that was the greatest Thanksgiving we ever had.
Or ever will have. --TK
Tuesday, November 13, 2018