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Here is a picture I took of a Restoration Hardware Family Puppet Theater that I saw sitting on a shelf in a secondhand store.  At first glance, it seems normal enough.

If you can't read the description at the bottom, here is what it says:

Family Puppet Theater

~A CHANCE AT FAMILY FAME AND A FORTUNE OF MEMORIES~

A cast of six scrumptious critters await stage debut and their awakening... all through the personality and life that you and yours can give them.  Gather round for rousing year-round theatrics with Family Puppet Theater... a platform for sharing the stories and fabrications, truths and fictions of our lives.

Wow.  Just...wow.  Someone needs to find the unemployed English Lit major who was independently contracted to write this (then apparently translate it into Japanese and then back into English) and smack some sense into them before they reproduce.  This is the single most pretentious description of a children's toy I have ever read.  Let's break it down, shall we...

1.  "...six scrumptious characters..."

They're puppets, not Dilly Bars from Dairy Queen.  This is an inappropriate and potentially dangerous description that will lead to a trip to Urgent Care due to your child's inability to pass Professor Higglesworth the Monkey.  If you asked me to name the top 500 adjectives that would accurately describe this toy and excite children, "scrumptious" would not make the list.  "Scrumptious" wouldn't even beat out such descriptors as "anthropomorphized," "sadistic" and "thermonuclear," all of which I would use to describe/sell these puppets to children before moving into describing their taste.  When little Billy has a perforated colon due to the three-inch sphere of felt wedged in his lower GI tract tighter than a deer tick in a dachshund, you'll know why.

2.  "...await stage debut and their awakening..."

"Await stage debut" is just wrong, and I can think of nothing more terrifying to a child than explaining to them that their puppets are "awaiting their awakening."  "Soon they will awaken, Billy.  All they need to do is devour the souls of three more unbaptized children before the next full moon, and then they will arise and live forever...in your bedroom."  As this is an unemployed English Lit major, I suppose they could be referencing The Awakening by Kate Chopin, but that's even worse.  It begs the question of whether the child or the puppets would embody the character of Edna Pontellier, and this is an important distinction because it is difficult to get a child to "show you on the doll" if the doll itself is responsible for the transgression.  Either way, someone's going to drown. 

I will now allow a moment for both the people who got that series of obscure literary references to bask in their intellectual vanity, just as I did while I made them.  I couldn't help it.  The description put me in that frame of mind.  Later, I will beat myself up.

3.  "...all through the personality and life that you and yours can give them..."

If you are buying your child a puppet theatre and "awakening" their puppets, you need to keep your damn personality to yourself.  You are not helping.  Give the kid a fighting chance.  Step away from the puppet and purchase a Wii as soon as possible.  Maybe then little Billy's friends will actually want to come over to his house instead of shunning him and his parents like some kind of liberal arts leper colony.

4.  "...Gather round for rousing year-round theatrics..."

If you are putting on puppet performances year-round, slap yourself and your child--maybe that will bring some color to your collective, pasty cheeks.  There's a great big world out there, and it's waiting to kill you.  Every moment you spend playing with your puppets is a moment Charlie spends squatting in the bush...getting stronger. 

5.  "...a platform for sharing the stories and fabrications, truths and fictions of our lives."

What the hell kind of puppet shows do you think people are going to be doing with their kids?  Are you and your three year-old expecting to put on the all monkey and elephant production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  You know what stories and fabrications, truths and fictions you're going ot be portraying?  I'll give you an excerpt from the script every child will be presenting at some point:

Monkey:  Hello, Elephant.

Elephant:  Hello, Monkey.

Monkey:  I'm a monkey.  Hello.  Do you want to play?

Elephant:  Yes.  Let's play.  Also, I am an elephant.  Hello.

Monkey:  Let's kung-fu fight!  Hyah!

Elephant:  I'm really a robot!

Monkey:  So what!  I have a lightsaber!  (Monkey grabs a nearby pencil and repeatedly stabs Elephant.)  Yea!  Let's drink chocolate milk!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand scene.

That's the type of play these puppets are going to be acting out time and again.  It will be one of the most shallow, pedantic theatrical endeavors in the history of drama.  Unless Billy the three year-old is an alcoholic veteran who is already coming to grips with his own homosexuality and the loss of his emotionally distant father, the above exchange is the extent of his "truths and fictions."  Pray to heaven this is all the deeper little Billy is. 

I will now attempt to write a more accurate description of this puppet theater:

Family Puppet Theater

~A chance for you to drive your parents crazy either by speaking in silly voices or by forcing them to do so~

A cast of six arm-socks--soon to be five when Squiggles the Seal becomes your dog's "special friend"--await their chance to amuse you for roughly twelve minutes before being forgotten and/or lost under the refrigerator.  Gather round and watch your parents come to grips with the fact that neither they nor you are as creative as they thought, and wallow in the frustration and self-loathing that follows. 

I hope you have enjoyed this dose of reality.  Please feel free to offer up your own descriptions in the comment section below--even though I know no one will.