The '9-1-1' scooter and other worst toys for Christmas

From annoying, noisy toys that you want to hurl against the wall to just plain scary ones, here are the worst toys of 2012:

7. Just Like Home Play Food

Leanne Shirtliffe
If you’re already missing your Twinkies and Ho-Hos, after the demise of Hostess, these plastic snack cakes could conceivably replicate their look and feel.

The Too Much Plastic Award goes to this set of polymer donuts and pastries. If you’re already missing your Twinkies and Ho-Hos, because of the demise of Hostess, these could conceivably replicate the look and feel of the snack cakes. Then again, if this food really is “just like home,” as the label indicates, it’s no wonder why childhood obesity is on the rise. Save your $14.99 and you’ll save yourself the challenge of reading the this-plastic-bag-could-kill-you warning, which comes translated in 11 different languages.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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