CRAPPY HOLIDAYS!
A unicorn that poops sparkly slime? Meet Poopsie, the season’s hottest toy — and parents’ worst nightmare
AFTER Dan Choi’s daughter Riley scored a goal in soccer a few weeks ago, he took her to Target to pick out a celebratory treat. Racing down the kiddie aisle, it didn’t take the 6-year-old long to find what she wanted.
“She was like, ‘Oh, that’s a Poopsie!’ ” says Choi, a 38-year-old father of four living in Mission Viejo, Calif. “I was like, ‘What the heck is a Poopsie?’ ”
The Poopsie Slime Surprise Unicorn is a doe-eyed doll with loose bowels, and it’s the hottest — and grossest — toy of the holiday season. The $49.99 mythological creature sucks down a bottle-fed meal of slime-making powdered “unicorn food” mixed with lukewarm water. Then, when a child pushes on her bellybutton, she shoots out a stream of candy-colored goo from a heart-shaped hole in her bottom.
Kids have been freaking out about the fecal filly since this fall, when its commercials and “unboxing” videos (in which online toy mavens unwrap and demo a new release) went viral on YouTube. With Christmas just around the corner, parents are freaking out about the toy, too — but for different reasons.
“I’m going to start a parents’ action group against slime and glitter,” says James Alba of Oradell, NJ. As a father of three, he says he can handle a little bathroom humor — “I’ve cleaned enough poopy diapers in my lifetime” — but Poopsie’s output of sparkly slime is a bigger problem.
“There’s already glitter embedded in our hardwood floors,” he says
bigger problem.
“There’s already glitter embedded in our hardwood floors,” he says.
Still, he begrudgingly bought one for his “unicorn-obsessed” 8-year-old, Siena, after the toy survived more than a few rewrites of her Christmas list.
“She is gonna be excited [when she opens it],” says Alba, 44, who owns a hair salon with his wife. “But I hope it’s not a disaster . . .I can see it now: We’re setting the table the one time of year we actually use our wedding china, and [Poopsie’s slime] is infiltrating our entire house.”
Although Choi isn’t nearly as scandalized by goo, he was disturbed to learn that the endgame of playing with Poopsie is getting her to, well, let one loose.
“I thought it was a joke!” he says. Choi asked his daughter to explain: “‘You like this, this poop?’ She was like, ‘Yeah, but it’s unicorn poop. It’s not human poop.’ ”
Good thing, says Choi. The first time they played with Poopsie together, his hands got quite a bit dirtier than expected.
“I took too long to let the slime poop out and it started to congeal,” says the technology consultant of the toy, which demands a fair amount of parental involvement for young kids.
“I’m pressing the poop button and nothing is coming out,” he says, reliving the moment. “I had to turn it underneath . . . and poke at it with a toothpick.”
Given the projected sales for Poopsie, Choi isn’t the only parent with a winter full of unicorn enemas in his future.
Isaac Larian, founder and CEO of MGA Entertainment — the company behind Poopsie as well as other holiday hits of yore, such as Bratz and LOL dolls — estimates that they’ll sell about 650,000 Poopsies around the world this season. He says the toy’s humor is the point — “funny is money” — and explains its popularity.
“It’s like a toy version of a meme,” says Klim Kozinevich, a 25-year veteran of the toy industry and creative director of design firm Bigshot Toyworks. He’s not impressed with it. “Look at this stupid thing.”
Although moms and dads aren’t too jazzed about the defecating dolly, they’re still desperately trying to get their hands on one in time for Christmas.
Baltimore-based Brittany Jackson, 30, says that after her 4-year-old daughter, Bellamy, begged her for one, she went ahead and ordered it at Target. Then, the shipment got canceled because the store ran out. The same thing happened at Walmart.
“I started losing my mind,” she says. Eventually, she got one last week by enlisting the help of a product-tracking app.
As for the toy’s gross-out factor, the mother of two is looking on the bright side. “The slime isn’t brown,” she says. “I’m fine with it.”