Hard-to-Believe Gifts for the Hard to Please

Economists predict that you will spend $655 on Christmas gifts this year, a figure they arrived at by tirelessly charting the spending patterns of California residents, meticulously writing down half a dozen possible figures, taping that piece of paper to a wall and flinging a dart at it.

Let’s say they’re right. (While we’re at it, let’s say Uruguay will capture the hockey gold medal in the 1994 Winter Olympics.)

Six hundred and fifty-five dollars. A sizable sum. Want to spend it on something sensible like, say, things your family needs? Of course not. It’s Christmas. You want to blow it senselessly, taking advantage of the current wave of products marketed, it seems, by people who were at some point deprived of oxygen for prolonged periods.

And boy, can we help.

Let’s start slowly.

Hammacher Schlemmer, a top-end gift store with locations in Chicago, New York and Beverly Hills, offers some real gems for the catalogue shopper. The 100-page book begins with this greeting:

Shop with Hammacher Schlemmer for your special holiday gifts. From the luxurious Turkish bathrobe to the exciting Virtual Reality Stuntmaster, we have the perfect gift for everyone on your list.

Turkish bathrobe?

When you think of the country of Turkey, don’t you think of prisons? Places where men spend years with rodents sleeping on their foreheads?

Of course you do.

But Hammacher Schlemmer doesn’t. It thinks of “imported robes from the ancient city of Bursa, Turkey, famous for its baths and centuries-old towel-making industry.”

And it also thinks of $100, which is what one of the white robes costs.

And just what is a Virtual Reality Stuntmaster? Well, briefly, it is a small computer screen that is attached to your head with a helmet and allows you and your children to sit in ultimate stupefaction, oblivious to the world, as Mario and Luigi dodge bricks and flying ducks. It is a video game that is, basically, welded onto your face. It costs $269.

Don’t get the idea that Hammacher and his buddy have cornered the market this year on goofy. New York-based FAO Schwartz chips in with some beauts. Example: Plunkett the cow, a 34-inch-tall stuffed animal. She does nothing. She costs a hundred bucks. The FAO Schwartz marketing folks dig deep into the bag of really clever puns and come up with “udderly delightful” and “at this price you can be sure she’ll mooooove quickly,” in an effort to get you to part with the hundred bucks. Someone will.

Or for a mere $110, you can talk Schwartz out of his Indian Riding Pony, which is supposed to make your kid think you bought him a horse for Christmas but is really a seven-pound beanbag chair with a head.

FAO perhaps out-Schwartz’s itself with this item: Silken Flame Barbie. She wears a bright red coat with matching spike heels. She costs $220. There’s just one name for anyone who would spend $220 to get their hands on someone named Barbie: Knucklehead.

Or from Massachusetts-based Colgate Oral Pharmaceuticals comes this terrific gift idea: dental floss.

“Has your floss been stringing you along?” asks Colgate’s public relations department, going on to explain that a new dental floss doesn’t leave any flecks of string wedged between your teeth.

The PR folks suggest the product be included in newspapers’ holiday gift round-ups, presumably because nothing says happy holidays quite like a product that digs old food out of your mouth.

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Tired of shopping by mail? Want to yank on your sandals and actually get out among the lunacy?

Well, don’t wait another moment. L.A.’s 24,349 malls are packed to the ceilings with potential holiday gifts.

A music-box store in one mall offers, for about $50, a box that plays “The Shadow of Your Smile” as a ceramic alligator dentist rips the teeth out of an alligator patient.

Ski shops offer a mind-boggling array of items, including the popular $15 neoprene mask with dozens of breathing holes that make even the novice skier look exactly like Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Hey, if other skiers don’t give some ground to a slaloming Hannibal Lecter, you’re at a tough resort.

Or how about some skis?

Pricey, at more than $300, sure. But why quibble over money when you can give a pair of Ski Elan KevlarC Single Reflex Cap SRC 790s, made, according to the large decal, in Slovenia. And nothing says quality quite like Slovenia.

Too much? OK.

Then we suggest this gift idea from a mall jewelry shop: Free Holiday Ear Piercing. (Of course, only the holes are free; the earrings aren’t.) There will be lots of gifts this year, but what really says “I Adore You” as much as jabbing a sharp nail through the ears of a loved one?

Perhaps music is your thing. Then what you want to give is the Four Lads singing “16 of the most requested songs” for $6.99. Or “The Best of Jim Nabors” ($7.99). Included on this cassette is his version of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ol’ Oak Tree.” And if settling into your favorite chair on a cold winter night beside the fire and listening to Gomer Pyle belt out that song doesn’t fill you with the warmth of the holidays . . . well, hello Mr. Scrooge.

Ditto for Mr. Slim Harpo singing “Baby, Scratch My Back” as only he can.

But it’s clothing you want? Quite an assortment out there. Eddie Bauer features men’s underwear for about $12 a pop. Eddie Bauer Underwear. Personally, and this is just one man talking here, there are some men who don’t feel totally comfortable with another man’s name stitched into their underwear, thank you very much.

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Of course, all those items are mere preludes to the real reason for Christmas gift-giving. That, of course, is the children. Toymakers, long the social conscience of the nation--remember Pet Rocks and Odd Og (“Odd Og, Odd Og . . . half turtle and half frog”)?--have spent months in the labs, gearing up for the holiday season.

They proudly present:

* Ren and Stimpy dolls, based on the cartoon characters who, on a weekly basis, yank lungs and bleeding organs from each other’s bodies. For a mere $14.99, you can get a Ren doll that, when activated, shouts such heart-warming holiday greetings as: “You fat, bloated idiot!” Stimpy responds to the squeeze of his tummy with a noise. Thank your stars they couldn’t figure out how to include the accompanying smell.

* Crash Dummies ($8.99). You fling them against a wall and their heads and arms snap off. Ages 3 and up.

* Swamp Thing Coloring Books. Your toddlers can shade in the oozing green skin and the pus-filled eyes of this stunningly scary creature. Cost: $5. Of course, the subsequent child psychiatry sessions can reach upward of $100 an hour.

Earning an honorable mention in the 1993 balloting for a standout contribution to culture are the folks who bring us Blurp Balls.

The first version of Blurp Balls is a deformed pig called Spitooey Soooey ($4.99), which regurgitates chunks of food. Or, as the manufacturer says on the package, “When it comes to blowing chunks, this sickening swine really is a pig.”

The pig’s similarly priced counterpart is Tyranosaurus Retch, the equally deformed dinosaur who throws up the partially decomposed bodies of cavemen he has eaten. “You can’t keep a good man down,” the marketing maestros trumpet on this package. “And T. Retch should know. He’s upchucked enough cave dwellers to fill a tar pit.” Ages 4 and up.

But the grand prize goes to an Alabama company for--drum roll, please--dinosaur doo-doo.

“The ultimate gift to celebrate life or delight your favorite dinosaur buff,” the Christmas ad says. “Naturally glittering fossiled droppings from Cretaceous-Era Critters are over 65 million years old and still going strong. Each gift includes 40 grams of pyrotyzed coprolites, certificate of authenticity and elegant wrapping.”

Price: $24.

Plus $3 for handling charges. (Now there’s a terrific job!)

The company’s name?

Endangered Feces.