It's all Freud and games.

Had to go to Walmart -- well, maybe no one ever has to, but I needed a variety of objects -- so I decided to pick up something for the tots on my list. No waiting for Black Friday, not this guy! Besides, on Black Friday I'll be too busy digesting from Feast Thursday.

I wanted to pick up a particular game, a multi-generational classic, but it took a while to even find games, with all the aisles of licensed character crap out there. And speaking of crap, when I did find the games, my first thought was -- why are we trying to raise a generation obsessed with scatology?

Pass the Poop! is a fun-filled... Well, it's filled with something, anyway. The game seems to be a musical-chairs or hot-potato style event where you pass the emoji-like poop toy about until the music stops and that person, like poop itself, is eliminated. Or so I am guessing from the box. The whole thing looks pretty sad to me. 

And if that's not enough poop for your party, here's Don't Step In It! If the name and the box were not illustrative enough, the words Llama Poop are helpfully spelled out. What are the rules? You wear a blindfold and try not to step on the fake (one hopes) llama poop. It's educational for your child's future career as a college administrator, or residence in San Francisco. In my youth, games with imperative titles were less disgusting (Don't Break the Ice! Don't Blow Your Top! Don't Wake Daddy! Don't Mess Around with Jim!) (spot the fake).

Moving slightly away from poop, we have Gas Out, a game featuring a toy fart named Guster. It looks like Uno combined with Pass the Poop -- there's a card game involved, but if Guster lets one rip during your turn, you're blown out of the game. It's a blast!

If you didn't get enough llama-like action but you're tired of bringing up the rear, Hackin' Packin' Alpaca is the spitting image of what you want. Looks like an updated version of the Last Straw, a game with a plastic camel and a bunch of things to load him with. In that game the camel would break when overloaded. Here, the alpaca spits rather than splits. Maybe it's more humane this way. I expectorate lots of fun with this on Christmas morning!

Getting away from the gastrointestinal system entirely, we have Pimple Pete, a game actually endorsed by TV's Dr. Pimple Popper (who may be weird but I can tell you from work-related experience is as friendly and helpful as she appears on television). The game here is to do to Pete what dermatologists have been telling us not to do for decades -- pop pimples. Why? I don't know. Why does poor Cavity Sam get it in the neck (and everywhere else) in Operation, the wacky doctor game? At least Operation teaches you that sometimes you have to use surgery. You probably should never go popping your buddy's pimples.

Enough with the games! Maybe a plain toy is what I need.

Uh...

Butt Heads' Fart Launcher 3000 -- don't you just love that space-age "3000" in the name? Buck Rogers used one! -- does what even the gas game above does not: It makes real GI-tract-like gas odors. And you can shoot them! At your friends! I mean, yeah, we did that when we were kids, but we were seventeen, and instead of the Fart Launcher 3000 we used Piels. I can't imagine the circumstances that would lead me to want to give my own child a Fart Launcher. Someone else's child, on the other hand... someone I don't like... hmm.

But I bought none of these toys on this trip.

Sadly, I could not even find what I was looking for, a popular game from my childhood, something much cleaner and more wholesome than these, something based not on biological functions but on... uh, head lice. But they were all out of Cootie.