My now 4-year old son was given "Bembo's Zoo" at his Red Egg & Ginger Party (at around 4 mo). He loved it. Check out the nifty Flash animation of the animals formed from letterforms: http://www.bemboszoo.com/. He's gonna love this version too.

Years ago for either a birthday or housewarming gift, a friend brought over a (presumably) clean Rubbermaid tray filled with I think peanuts (maybe chopped?) and for the "poop", unwrapped Almond Roca, which works well because of all the bits of almond embedded in the chocolate.

After eating all the Almond Roca (yum), I kept picking at the peanuts for a while, then eventually tossed the rest and used the tray as a second litter box.

Anyways a delicious and authentic-looking (if pricey) alternative for edible fake poop.

I saw Jacob Holdt present his slide show at UC Santa Barbara in 1988, I believe.

It was particularly weird to see such a personal involvement in what might otherwise be a dry academic anthropological study.

He hitchhiked across the US throughout the 70s, lived on welfare and food stamps through the 80s, stayed in ghettos, fell in love, photographed everyone he met, and included himself as part of the story. I feel lucky to have gotten to see the show.

If you thought his captions were funny to read, check out his life history: http://www.american-pictures.com/english/jacob/lifehist.htm

Catapault vs. Trespassers? Say, I remember an episode of Ed about that: http://www.footnote.tv/mled.html

I found myself viewing the featured image like a Magic Eye stereoscopic image. Now my head hurts. Thanks.

Yeah, Wired covered this in their January 2008 issue. Good read, although the article included a "hidden message" that was pretty lame (as a recent letter points out.) They make us pick out highlighted letters and the best they can come up with is pull quotes?

Hey Clay -- turns out this is the Gun of Basketball variant. Here's a link to a wider shot of the gun in action, with the spinning top visible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoQ_Qi0KKWc

I hadn't heard of the Gun of Baseball before. Funny.

Thanks for posting this -- the main reason I was sending it was because I couldn't figure out what song the toy played, and thanks to BB, I now know (or was reminded) that it's Lambada ("The Forbidden Dance!), by Kaoma, a hit back in 1989. But hey, now everybody knows that I let my son stick a gun/whistle in his mouth. It's ok, I'm going to go recycle it now. Strange for a presumably Chinese toy, it has an international (?) recycling symbol on it as well as the "Do not throw this in the trash" symbol. I'll put a photo of that up too soon.

--Darryl