Classic(ally Bad) TV Commercials: Oh Yeah… THAT’S a Surprise!
Everyone loves puppies. But how many people love yanking newborn puppies out of their mother’s womb? Thanks to HASBRO, now you can join in the fun!
I guess in 1991, when this spot was made, the folks at HASBRO were looking to jazz up their toys a bit. Anyone can make a stuffed animal, but only HASBRO makes the animal you can safely un-stuff! And exactly what is Puppy Surprise stuffed with? Pocket change she shouldn’t have eaten? A bad batch of ALPO? A tapeworm the size of your living room couch? No, good old Puppy Surprise is stuffed with baby puppies because she’s been whoring around again.
This product was obviously marketed towards young girls, and I can see why since raising a small child to adulthood is part of a woman’s life. But puppies pulled right from the mother’s gut? WHAT?!? I understand baby dolls that wet themselves or need feeding as educational and I suppose fun for young girls to play with while unknowingly training themselves for motherhood, but how many kids are around for a live birthing of a dog? And even if they were around, wouldn’t they be horrified to know newborn puppies don’t come out all plush with ribbons on their heads? There’s a lot of sticky goo on those cute little puppies when they first hit the ground.
Maybe the whole motherhood thing wasn’t the point of the product… it was just training kids to take care of puppies early on. Okay, I get it, every kid gets a chance to raise and take care of a puppy or kitty until it dies many many many years later. But I can tell you firsthand pulling babies from its mother just isn’t fun or appealing. For me it came in high school when we were dissecting dogfish (ironically) in marine biology class. Cutting open a dead fish and looking at its insides– no problem. Having my teacher feel around inside the fish and pull out four or five fully-formed babies like he was God and Doug Henning’s love child– lunch was not eaten that day. And how many kids were mauled by their neighbor’s dog because they were squeezing the dog’s stomach trying to guess how many babies were inside? I smell a lawsuit here!
If the idea of having your daughter stick her hand up the uterus of a stuffed animal so she could pull out the babies isn’t disturbing enough, the fact HASBRO had the gall to randomly insert various numbers of puppies into the mother is just cruel. So you go out and spend $20 on this toy, and your daughter is unhappy because it only produces three puppies. Do you go out and spend $20 more in the hopes she hits the jackpot and gets five? How many stuffed dogs and their puppies were left abandoned because girls pulled a Veruca Salt and wanted more right now?
So HASBRO has done the amazing, making animal birth as cute and cuddly as a teddy bear. If only the kids saw the “Puppy Surprise’s One Night Stand” toy explaining how those little puppies got in there in the first place, abstinence would be all the rage!
