Rhymes with Poon Fro
A CONSUMER PRODUCT REVIEW -
I have three kids. They want everything they see and they end up getting most of it. Ten percent of what they get my wife and I give them while the other 90% comes from well-intentioned friends and relatives who really don’t give a shit what we think they shouldn’t have. To that end, today one of our neighbors - a terrific family - brought over a gift for them with the best of intentions. That gift is something called Moon Dough.
Moon Dough seems to be going after the market share held by the Play-Doh I grew up with by selling these features and benefits: It’s 1) soft, 2) hypo-allergenic, 2) wheat-free (what?) and 4) doesn’t dry out. So from the outset, it appears that the Moon Dough people are going after those choosy moms whose little angels can’t help but eat their arts and crafts, and who should be watching carbs and/or gluten allergies. The look on my wife’s face suggested that she knew what this stuff was and she wasn’t happy about it being in our house.
She explained to me she had repeatedly told our kids they couldn’t have it; apparently the Moon Dough commercials are aggressive, repetitive and hypnotic. Yet against her wishes and best efforts, here it was, in our house. Alas, that unwashed, misguided 90% of the populous had sliced through her prevent defense yet again to corrupt our kids.
The joyous, shouting demands of little voices to play with this stuff RIGHT AWAY suggested that the path of least resistance was in order, so a mat was placed on the floor where the Moon Dough could be investigated. Upon being unwrapped, it looked just like Play-Doh. Whatever. I failed to see the problem. We already have Play-Doh. This is America.
Very quickly I realized what my wife had known all along. Moon Dough is indeed soft, but also flaky; it takes very little movement for these flakes to go airborne. All three of my children were immediately covered in a fine yellow film. The dank scent of a shop floor filled the kitchen and found myself breathing in little yellow flakes. It felt as though a ceiling tile had cracked and asbestos was filling my kitchen with a happy, colorful death plume. I began coughing in earnest.
Without even directly touching this shit, I was able to rub my thumb and forefinger together and render a little ball of Moon Dough just from the film that had engulfed me as a bystander. It had consistency of belly button schmutz, and through my coughing fit I could see my kids and my kitchen slowly accumulating a dust covering that left undeterred would turn all of us into victims of what could be mistaken as a dandelion’s money shot (this only seems like an obscure reference if you’re not into botanical pornography).
I pulled my wife close and asked her what the fuck we were going to do, and to her credit, she intervened with deliberate intentions like Frank Capachino in the Tyson/Spinks fight. She pulled up the mat and collected as much solid Moon Dough as possible and threw everything in the trash, telling the kids they’d have to settle for either playing with Play-Doh or any one of the other billion toys in our house. Our kids being somewhat fancy, they looked at the film that covered them and did not put up any resistance. We all looked like lint that had collected in Big Bird’s ass crack.
The time it took to clean everything up exceeded the total amount of time that the kids played with it. We had to fucking vacuum each of the kids, since anyone leaving the kitchen would have taken this plume to other parts of the house (like, where the lint roller lives) and the vacuum fortunately happened to be close by. Nine hours later, I’m still clearing my throat.
Moon Dough, as is the case with loud toys that do not have a volume switch, was obviously created by people who do not have any fucking kids of their own. The product itself seems to be some sort of accidental textile by-product that has no useful purpose in manufacturing so it has been re-marketed for children. Under no circumstance should you gift this for anyone you actually like. Just like Moon Dough, Play-Doh is colorful, squishy and smells like shit - but is significantly easier to clean up and doesn’t quickly spread all over your house like mustard gas.
As with all things that suck, of course there are people who somehow absolutely love Moon Dough (as indicated by reviews on Amazon). I can only assume these people don’t give a shit about the unavoidable mess, uncontrollable coughing fits or simply are not familiar with Play-Doh. Either way, Moon Dough sucks. You’d rather have your kids playing with their poop, which they probably do anyway.
