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Sure it seems like a conceptual idea that would never work in real life, but this bathtub is actually completely functional, not to mention totally awesome -or at least, it would be if the creator actually finished the project. BoingBoing is trying to track down leads to find out if it was ever completed or not. If you have any information, share your knowledge in their comments section.
Link Via BoingBoing
Sure we all have things we resent our parents for, but it takes a lot to truly be a bad parent, especially to be named as one of the top ten terrible parents. While many of the cases are heart-breaking stories of abuse, some are just sickening displays of poor parental values -like the mother who bought her seven year-old a boob job. It makes you wish for a change in child abuse laws.
Nine-year-old Jonny Mizzone can play the banjo! On fiddle, you hear his 12-year-old brother Robbie, and 14-year-old Tommy accompanies them on guitar. The song is Ralph Stanley’s “How Mountain Girls Can Love.” You can see more of the brothers at the YouTube channel Sleepy Man Banjo Boys. Link -via reddit
This young champion of justice is named Riley, and she’s sick and tired of all the toy marketing gimmicks that keep girls from buying the superhero toys that they really like.
Watch as she explains what all the pink at the toy stores really means, and I’m sure you’ll agree that she is totally right. Let girls enjoy their superhero toys already, or Riley’s going to grow up and take you all down!
–via ComicsAlliance
From the remark about the hostages in Iran, I suspect this is from 1979 or 1980. The younger son grew up to host a website dedicated to photobombs. -Thanks, Comedy Wizard!
When you have a 3-year-old son and a one-year-old son, you try your best to keep an eye on them at all times. However, Mom was in the bathroom a little longer than usual, and these two found the new bag of flour. See the entire sequence caught on video at NeatoBambino. Link
Meet Koun Samang. When he was only three months old, his father found a python curled up in his crib. The dad removed the snake from the house, but it showed up again. It was released back in the jungle and then it came back again. It happened a total of three times before the Koun’s dad finally gave up and just let the snake hang out with his baby. Seven years later, the kid and the snake (now over 20 feet long) are best friends.
Of course, that’s not the only bizarre animal/human story friendship story. Cracked has five more and they are all equally fascinating.
Now here’s an impressive kid’s playset. Cia of DeerDot made this impressive four-story structure for her son to play with so he could play Mario brothers without actually turning on a gaming system. The detailed pictures at the link are definitely worth a look, so be sure you click away.
The Boy Scouts Of America are looking to recruit the future Ron Swanson’s of the world, but you don’t need a beard to join, you just need the desire to “be one with the wild” (their campaign slogan). Only time will tell whether their ads, featuring kids with epic beards, will increase their numbers or scare the wits out of potential recruits!
Halloween may be over, but that doesn’t make these eight month old twins playing the role of Goose and Maverick any less cute. Of course, the jet stroller is an unbelievably cute accessory.
Via Laughing Squid
We already posted our own round up of cute kid’s costumes, but The Mary Sue has their own gallery and the pictures are simply precious. My personal favorite is this adorable little Cabbage Patch Doll.
When it comes to parents on Halloween, there are those that let the kids gorge, those that parcel the candy out, and the parents who steal most of their kid’s candy. If you’re wondering which one dentists suggest, you might be surprised. They suggest it’s better to let the kids go crazy on Halloween night and then cut back their candy consumption rather than letting them eat a couple pieces every day after Halloween. Dentists warn:
Slowly snacking on Halloween candy every few hours, day after day, keeps your teeth bathed in enamel-corroding acid, the byproduct of bacteria feeding on sugar and other carbohydrates in your mouth. This leads to dental caries, or cavities.
So I guess even if you’re a candy stealer, it’s still better to steal it all in one night than stretch your thievery out.
Link Via The Mary Sue
I remember seeing stacks of these awful things on the shelves when I was a youngster, and hearing parents say things like “look for the ones that say non-flammable” and “well, at least you can use the mask”, as their kids stifled tears over their terribly disappointing selection of flimsy plastic costumes.
Browse through this gallery of awfulness and see just how good kids have it these days when it comes to Halloween costumes.
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Man’s best friend is getting a trial run as little-man’s best friend. Educators across the country are using canines to teach compassion and social responsibility, in efforts to curb school-age bullying.
Kansas City Schools have a program called No More Bullies, in which program volunteers, accompanied by trained dogs, teach kids about fairness, compassion, and integrity for one hour a day over five days. “The animals are the glue that helps the children stay focused and understand the message,” says Jo Dean Hearn, an ex-teacher who developed the program. “Children can easily identify with an animal. And it’s easy for them to transition when we ask them to consider how an animal feels (if ill treated) to how the kid sitting near them feels (if poorly treated).”
It’s a great program that’s showing promising results, and it isn’t the only one. Check out the rest of the story on The Week. Link
Fans of Disneyland know that no matter how popular an attraction is, there’s still a chance it won’t be there in ten years. That’s partly because Disney wanted his parks to always be improving, but also because things wear out or become dangerous and there’s no inexpensive fix. While some fan favorites, like Captian EO will eventually return if you wait long enough, others, like America Sings will be readapted to fit into another attraction and will never be seen in their original incarnation again. Here are a handful of attractions that once existed at the park and may or may not be gone for good.
Image Via bearexposed [Flickr]
Most visitors to Disneyland before the mid-nineties will remember this attraction, even if they never rode it. After all, an aerial gondola ride that went through the Matterhorn was something that was pretty easy to remember. The ride was built in 1956 and while plenty of similar rides exist in parks around the country these days, at the time, it was the first aerial ropeway in the U.S. In fact, the Skyway was actually built before the Matterhorn, which had to be built around the pre-existing gondola ride.
While the ride was very popular in that it allowed guests to view the entire park from above, it was closed in 1994 because the Matterhorn battery supports started to show stress cracks. In addition, prior to the closing of the ride, someone jumped out and while he ended up OK, the incident was certainly not something Disney executives wanted to repeat. Fixing the machinery and updating the ride to become ADA compliant and safer would have been outrageously expensive, so the ride was closed all together.
The hole in the Matterhorn is now covered up and the Tomorrowland station has been torn down, but the Fantasyland station is still sitting around empty.
Image Via ATIS547 [Flickr]
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m particularly sad this one is gone. Opened in 1972, the Country Bear Jamboree was a stage show performed by animatronic critters –mostly bears. The attraction was so popular, it even was given a special Christmas show to entertain guests and inspired a movie that was released in 2002. A year before the movie was released though, the attraction was removed to make room for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride.
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I don’t know about you guys, but just seeing this picture makes me want to visit Singapore’s Changi Airport where fliers can take the easy way to the bottom of the terminal with these delightful slides. If you’re a slide enthusiast or just curious what other weird places could install slides, don’t miss this great Oddee article.
Sure Fraggle Rock, The Smurfs and most other kid’s shows are a little strange, but these are nothing compared to the Teletubbies. If you really want to know just how bizarre children’s programming can get though, just take a look at these strange shows that make the Teletubbies look like a study in logical thought.
If you love American television programming, but wish you could use it to teach your children the perils of the evil Western fascist dogs, then Tomorrow’s Pioneers might just be your new favorite kids show. The show features a female host and a few costumed characters, including a knock-off Mickey Mouse character, entertaining children with ideas of antisemitism, anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism. As if that weren’t enough, many of the costumed characters are martyred, most notably, the Mickey Mouse character is killed by an Israeli interrogator, providing youngsters with a deep, long-standing hatred for Palestine’s sworn enemies. Nothing like getting your propaganda into your kid’s minds before they’re too old to think for themselves.
If you thought the Teletubbies were strange, just wait until you get a load of this show that their creator released after it. According to their website, the Boohbahs are “five magical atoms of power” who live in a Boohball, which is a glowing white ball that can travel from country to country whenever a child calls it. The Boohball features a spinning recharging pod where the Boohbahs can recharge their energy through the laughter of children they play with. Since this show was made for kids between the ages of three and five, I’m going to go ahead and say this show is actually just supposed to entertain kids with bright colors and weird effects –just like the Teletubbies, since all of that background story is way beyond the scope of any kids in their demographic.
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The Make-A-Wish Foundation has granted some pretty amazing dreams during their existence, but naturally, some of those wishes are most certainly more incredible than others. Cracked has a fantastic list of some of the most awesome wishes the group has ever granted. Take, for example, Eric’s wish to become a superhero:
Spider-Man called asking for his help. Spidey alerted Erik that the dreaded Dr. Dark and Blackout Boy, a new supervillain duo (played by Edgar Hansen and Jake Anderson from The Deadliest Catch), were terrorizing the people of Seattle. They’d captured the Seattle Sounders MLS team and were holding them hostage in their own locker room. Spider-Man explained that he was busy, and he knew that Erik was really just the secret identity of the superhero Electron Boy, so he begged Eric for his help in saving the day…
Read more about Eric’s wish and the rest of these incredible dreams at the link.
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You might remember my post from a week ago featuring a precious baby dressed as The Doctor, at the time, I had no info on where the image came from. But thanks to your comments, I now know that the WhoBaby actually has her own blog, Flickr account and Twitter account filled with even more adorable pictures. If you want more, there is plenty more to see, so enjoy!
Comments Off It’s uncanny how much your parents change as you grow up. Can I get an “amen”? -via Breakfast Links
If you’ve been looking for some paper dolls to play with that are actually designed for adults instead of kiddos, then BuzzFeed has a great collection of them for your paper-playing pleasure. Time to get printing!
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I know school’s about to start (if it hasn’t already), but just in case you want to provide them with a few last educational activities at home, this geode egg project is a good way to get them interested in the science of crystallization.
I’m sure we can all agree that it’s important to keep kids safe from the big dangers of this world, but there is certainly a line between safety and stupidity and many schools these days have jumped right over that border. Cracked ha a great list of the most idiotic things schools are doing in the name of safety, including making them wear electric tracking bracelets, banning all photography and preventing all physical contact. Read about the rest over at the link.
I know a lot of our readers were born a lot earlier than I was, but for those of you raised in the nineties, this BuzzFeed article has a lot of funny ways to prove it that you will find yourself nodding your head to in agreement.
This Tron Light Cycle scooter just might be the ultimate kid’s toy for those aspiring to raise their children with proper reverence for all things geek. I don’t know about you guys, but I wish I had one when I was a youngster. Unfortunately, it’s only a concept at this point, but let’s hope it moves in to production soon.
Link Via Geeks Are Sexy
(Edit by Alex 8/25/11) See also: PlasmaBike over at the NeatoShop
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If you’ve been to Disneyland in the last twenty years, then you’re almost certainly familiar with Splash Mountain. Even if you refuse to ride the massive log ride, you probably at least rode the train through the tunnel that shows the happy ending of the ride. But did you know the ride is based on a movie that has never been released on home video because it’s considered too offensive? Or that the reason there are so many familiar faces inside is because the imagineers salvaged the characters for another attraction? There’s plenty more fun trivia like this inside this edition of our Neatorama Facts series.
Image Via OpenThreads [Flickr]
The Zip-a-Dee River Run was originally conceived of as a way to start attracting more people over to the often empty Bear Country area of the park, which was renamed Critter Country after Splash Mountain was opened. Unfortunately, the project quickly ballooned over budget, becoming one of the most expensive projects the Imagineering team had worked on up until that point. To help reduce the cost as much as possible, the team decided to use previously existing animatronic animals from the recently closed America Sings attraction. Even then, the ride still ended up costing $75 million to complete.
Although CEO Michael Eisner kept pushing for the ride to be based on the film Splash, imagineers had long planned to base the ride on the live action/animation film Song of the South and they refused to be moved on that point. In honor of Eisner’s ignored contributions, they did decide to change the name of the ride from the Zip-a-Dee River Run to Splash Mountain.
Strangely, despite the fact that one of the most popular Disney rides was based on Song of the South, the company has still refused to release the title to American home video or DVD because their executives believe the content is offensive to black people. While Uncle Remus is the character believed to be the most offensive and was left out of the ride as well, his presence can be felt in the queue area; a variety of his quotes can be found throughout the barn-themed line area, all the way up to the loading area.
Images Via Express Monorail and PrincessAshley [Flickr]
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If your kiddos are getting tired of boring old regular playdough colors, then try adding some sparkles to the black dough and they can suddenly play with space playdough. If you want to make your own, Fairy Dust Teaching has a great recipe.
If there’s one thing ridiculously rich people are good at, it’s wasting money. And this list of potential gifts for the world’s most spoiled children is equal parts depressing and hilarious. Just check out this $10,000 teddy bear made with black Tahitian pearl eyes, white alpaca fur and a 10k diamond necklace on a gold chain.
If you want to make an attention-grabbing ad, you have to do something really outrageous these days. That being said, these 10 ads on Oddee -all featuring kids- are utterly disturbing.
Pop Up books are largely considered children’s territory, but WebUrbanist has a great selection of 3D books that grown ups can enjoy too. I certainly would enjoy getting my hands on some of these. How about you guys?
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