After a long hiatus I’ve decided I miss the blog and want to start again. And the beauty of the blog is that it’s always here. (Love that Internet) Hope everyone had a lovely holiday. We did, aside from the colds (we should have converted to hankies or invested in Kleenex at this point, considering mountainous piles of tissue next to wrapping paper in our living room over the holiday season). I’m also fighting the urge to take laxatives to counteract the effects of truckloads of butter cookies and massive amounts of everything else. Isn’t that what the super models do? Oh yeah, I’m not a super model. I’m just super.
Anyway, since this blog is about the Bug we should spend time on update. The Bug got a robot dinosaur for Christmas. It a shoebox-sized dinosaur named Pleo and after a frenzy of activity around him things have calmed around here.
It was my worst fear with this pricey toy – that she’d love, love, love it for about two days and then toss him in the closet next to the flattened Chutes and Ladder game and her size 3 flowergirl dress.
Well, Pleo’s not quite in the closet yet, but I fear that’s where he’s headed. Poor thing. Pleo was her dream for a year. She diligently saved her (our) pennies in her piggy bank toward the robot dinosaur (In case you have no idea what this thing is, check out the video on the Pleo website) He’s a little life-like dino who moans, sings little muffled tunes, walks (sort of), eats a leaf and is supposed to “respond” to its owner. It does wiggle its tail like mad when you pet it. And whines when you steal it’s leaf or leave it alone on the carpet. It never gets particularly scary, but the trouble is its battery runs out in about an hour and has to be rebooted for like four hours. So if you have an impatient kid, this is not the toy for you. Your kid will bawl while Pleo reboots. At least until he or she gets sick of it and tosses it in the closet.
Pleo now costs about $150 on Amazon. It retailed for $349 (and strangely still is $349) when I first checked the website months back. Maybe the company is in trouble because the thing has been deeply discounted since. The funny thing is when I checked eBay to try to get a deal on the thing people were bidding it up higher than the retail price. I don’t know if this is the norm on eBay but I did not find this to be an effective buying strategy. Come to eBay and pay more than retail!!!!
So I bought the dino on Amazon for about $200 and the following week Amazon slashed the price. OK, Kate contributed her $70. Still.
So it’s been what, a week, since she opened the Pleo. I am not saying that she no longer cares for Pleo. What I found is that her love for Pleo follows the path of any love relationship.
1) Borderline obsession. You are absolutely in love and want to play every second. Can’t get enough of each other. You are constantly discovering new things about your love and never want to be apart. Your love can do no wrong. You never want to let it out of sight and will maim, injure or even kill to protect it.
2) The mellowing as reality sets in. The shine isn’t off the apple yet, but suddenly when the dino runs out of battery life it’s ok. “Mommy can you reboot the battery?” you ask mattery of factly, and turn to your Connect Four game. You want to show the Pleo to everyone who comes over and want control of it to let people know it’s yours. But by now, the Pleo is showing new, less attractive sides of himself (he growled at mommy when she grabbed his leaf) and sometimes he falls off napping when you want to play. You are a bit sad at his lack of skills. “He doesn’t do all that much mommy.” True, he doesn’t jump and can’t really “play” with you. He likes to sleep a lot.
3) Reality sets in. Pleo is cool, but he might not be everything I thought he was. He doesn’t really listen to you and doesn’t communicate all that well. He’s cute, but a bit stupid and he whines too much. You are not sure you are getting enough out of this relationship. You think your friends might be more fun than the Pleo.
4) Toss in closet.
Happy New Year everyone!
