I don't buy the idea that autism is exclusively a thing you're born with. It's a set of traits that every normal person has but just to an extreme degree. I don't really buy that you are either born autistic or not. I think it's more that certain people are more predisposed to autistic tendencies and that society can make it worse, though certainly there are people born unlucky enough to never be anything other than low functioning autistics.
I have watched a lot of shit about autism and children (together specifically) and the first thing that the people do when they think a kid is autistic is give them some sort of vague purpose toy. Shit like lego is one. But I've seen other things like a piece of fabric that is 'meant' to be a skirt for a doll but the doctor will say oh what if it's actually a cape instead. Shit like that. Taking something that has some sort of intended purpose but not using it as only that. Normal kids will agree that yea maybe it is a cape and also the cape actually it has superpowers baked into it and now the dinosaur is flying and nyoooooom woooosh and shit. Or yea maybe the lego is meant to be a space ship but actually I'm going to make a machine that idk you put batman in one side and out the other side he comes out as a wizard. The idea that rigid thinking and the inability to just know how to play with something in an imaginative way are early markers of autistic thinking. Another thing that comes up a lot in those sorts of shows is that they will look at quite a lot of the kids and agree that xyz thing that this kid does are signs of autism, however they are not actually autistic. They're saying that a lot of the traits that normal kids have are also autistic. You just have to hit a certain threshold or severity in them to be diagnosed. In those children they have for whatever reason developed something that in isolation is indistinguishable from autism. They way they play is indistinguishable from the autistic way of playing. But they're not autistic. So how does that happen? Other than maybe you have been taught that, you've picked it up from somewhere, maybe you just never learnt the right way. And so on.
How do you play with a squishmallow imaginatively? You can't. I had a tiger plush as a kid. It was like the one in that image, just a normal relatively like I don't know the word but photorealistic but as a plush. It would also sometimes be a bear and it would stand on it's hind legs and scratch things. Sometimes it would also have learnt how to dance and dance with it's legs. Sometimes it was a human and would put on human clothes and I would put my swimsuit on it and throw it in the bath which my mother loved. So if a toy simply does not have the possibility for any form of imaginative play then what does that result in? It's the same with the squishy shit. Everyone hated them because there was nothing you could do with them. It's not a toy, it's just a ball of plastic with fluid inside, you don't play with it, you follow the instructions on it. If ridid thinking and a lack of imagination are signs of autism then what happens when we give our kids things that is impossible to play with imaginatively and forces you to interpret it rigidly? What happens to our kids in that situation?
To some degree it's a bit like the lack of lego type toys too. The entire reason for playing with things as a kid is to develop your brain and skills. It sounds dumb but shit like lego is really good for fine motor skills, shit that you'd need if you want to get some trade job or some manufacturing job, God knows you're not getting one of those 6 figure salary cleanroom jobs if you can't use your hands properly. Maybe dancing with the tiger is a way to develop a sense of rhythm. Or maybe it's social. I had lightsabers as a kid, they don't really help any physical or mental development really, but they do teach you very basic shit like 'if you beat the shit out of your friends they will stop liking you' and other incredibly basic lessons that sound demeaning to say they even need to be taught but they do. And so on. Toys have a purpose. They do things. Even if they're not obvious. It's not just 'oh that's a kid so you buy them a toy', it's 'I want my child to develop the basis for more advanced skills and I will give them toys to help them do so'. A squishmallow doesn't do anything. You don't learn or develop anything from it. Squishing a toy doesn't further your childhood development. It doesn't stimulate your brain. It doesn't develop any fine motor skills. It doesn't do anything. It just sits there. It's the equivalent of feeding your kids nothing but fast food and being surprised they turn out retarded. The absolute best thing I can say about them is I guess at least the fucking gatcha pull list might help your memory? Even then that is fucking bleak.
Alongside the whole predatory type bullshit that goes on with them. I always get flashbacks to maxmoefoe in this thread. But I mean him opening upyes I misremembered slightly shut up the fucking ryan's world toy mystery blind bag things and going yea I think we should have them on the slot machines by 3 years old comes to mind very often. That and the massive amount of literal shit themed stuff which I don't remember existing, I remember gross things but not literally 'here's a plastic tub shaped like a piece of shit full of slime'. It feels very much like the elsagate shit.
It's a shame honestly. I have a few that are in the same style but are just knock offs. They're not generic blob shapes either. The material that they use for this sort of thing, both the skin and the stuffing, is really nice and there are things that would 100% be better if they were made of that sort of shit instead of the traditional way. But that wouldn't create a viral market. That would just be being genuine and letting your product have value for being what it is. And that's why I don't know the name of the things I own and you certainly wouldn't, yet we both know the name squishmallow.
Every day we are closer to the shape store AI thing. Stripped down thats all thats left, hyping basic shapes like triangles and circles in different flat colors. The object is already irrelevant in the equation since hype and fomo is the entire experience, the performance is pre-programed, the object in question can be reduced to the absolute minimum as long as the correct triggers are in place.
Every day we are closer to the shape store AI thing. Stripped down thats all thats left, hyping basic shapes like triangles and circles in different flat colors. The object is already irrelevant in the equation since hype and fomo is the entire experience, the performance is pre-programed, the object in question can be reduced to the absolute minimum as long as the correct triggers are in place.
I stopped by to get some coffees this morning and the manager brought out a new shipment of dumplings. There were several crates, so probably a couple hundred at least. As I was checking out, she told her coworker that they'd just sold out in 4 minutes. She hadn't even opened any of the boxes yet and they'd all been sold.
I looked into it.
NeeDoh is a "reputable" stress ball company. Their "Nice Cubes" are apparently filled with maltose and the "Groovy Glob" is polyvinyl alcohol gel.
These things seem to be filled with something else, and they also emit a lot of VOCs
I looked into it.
NeeDoh is a "reputable" stress ball company. Their "Nice Cubes" are apparently filled with maltose and the "Groovy Glob" is polyvinyl alcohol gel.
These things seem to be filled with something else, and they also emit a lot of VOCs download.mp4
No no, to be clear, NeeDoh is "legitimate". They seem to be what the Chinese danger-squishies are trying to knock off.
Their "Nice cubes" (the ones filled with maltose) run about $13, but the mystery dumplings are way cheaper.
The skeptic in me believes the Nee-Doh hype to be disingenuous ("astroturfed"? Am I using that right?).
Squishy toys have been around forever. They were commonly given away for free with a company's logo on them as promotional items. You could make your own by filling a balloon with play sand. At most they were the dollar impulse buys near the cash register at Toys R Us that you throw in on a whim with the rest of your purchase and tire of before you get to your mom's minivan in the parking lot. But now I'm supposed to believe that people are getting into fistfights over them in Target?
Astroturfing would be a company having their own in house undisclosed influencers making content about them hyping them up or paying existing ones to do so and not disclosing it. Which doesn't really look like what's happened exactly.
From what I've seen this is just more generic trend doing generic trend things but I could be wrong. It doesn't seem like the company selling them is the one promoting them, that's just fucking retards with too much money on tiktok and then that creating a feedback loop.
No no, to be clear, NeeDoh is "legitimate". They seem to be what the Chinese danger-squishies are trying to knock off.
Their "Nice cubes" (the ones filled with maltose) run about $13, but the mystery dumplings are way cheaper.
OK, I'll admit I was initially boomerised by seeing this AI post (fig.1) elsewhere on the web, only getting the joke after this AI post (fig.2), but even the initial post (fig. 3) is overboard.
The skeptic in me believes the Nee-Doh hype to be disingenuous ("astroturfed"? Am I using that right?).
Squishy toys have been around forever. They were commonly given away for free with a company's logo on them as promotional items. You could make your own by filling a balloon with play sand. At most they were the dollar impulse buys near the cash register at Toys R Us that you throw in on a whim with the rest of your purchase and tire of before you get to your mom's minivan in the parking lot. But now I'm supposed to believe that people are getting into fistfights over them in Target?
There's one major thing that differentiates the squishy toys from Labubus - price. The dumplings are, to my understanding, a Five Below exclusive. They cost, as you may have guessed, $5. It's something a kid could buy with their weekly allowance. Labubus, however, cost $30. Take scalpers out of the equation and you'd still have to save up to buy one.
For some perspective, here's the price of the Liquid Death x Miniverse ball I posted earlier:
One of the basic, noncollaborative releases:
And Mini Brands:
I've mentioned before that I find Miniverse to be less egregious than most blind boxes because you can use the leftovers and dupes for other things:
The skeptic in me believes the Nee-Doh hype to be disingenuous ("astroturfed"? Am I using that right?).
Squishy toys have been around forever. They were commonly given away for free with a company's logo on them as promotional items. You could make your own by filling a balloon with play sand. At most they were the dollar impulse buys near the cash register at Toys R Us that you throw in on a whim with the rest of your purchase and tire of before you get to your mom's minivan in the parking lot. But now I'm supposed to believe that people are getting into fistfights over them in Target?
Yeah, sorry about the confusion there. I wasn't sure how else to write it because like @femboy fart huffer and @My cravat doesn't flutter pointed out, NeeDoh is still selling "goo in bags" for $13.
Sure, their items may not be active poison like the squishies, but they're still just aesthetic stressballs.
I looked into it.
NeeDoh is a "reputable" stress ball company. Their "Nice Cubes" are apparently filled with maltose and the "Groovy Glob" is polyvinyl alcohol gel.
These things seem to be filled with something else, and they also emit a lot of VOCs download.mp4
The bootleg ones that I mentioned showing up where I work this past week literally smell like freshly sprayed spray paint, like right out of the can. They look exactly like the ones in this video.
I have been asked that so many times in my life. I have, through growing up dirt floor poor, amassed a decent array of various skills to repair, rebuild, retrofit, and reuse the parts on so many things. Growing up, you had better learn to fix something because you sure weren't gonna get another.
Why not just buy a new one?
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