If you’re ever feeling like you’ve grown up too fast, I’ve got a quick fix to take you back to childhood: Saturday morning cartoons. I was feeling especially brain-dead this past Saturday, so when I saw “Tom and Jerry” on TV, I was pumped. You know, Tom and Jerry hardly actually talk. I’m not sure why this both surprises and disappoints me.

Anyway, the commercials came on, like always. I’m usually an antsy TV watcher, changing the channel as soon as those ads come on, but like I said, I had putty for brains that day, so I just left it on Cartoon Network. All I have to say is… are kids today dumber than we used to be? Are they fooled by anything plastic and shiny? Do parents really buy all the dumb toys advertised?

For example, the first ad I saw was for the Spray Rocket Racer. Oh, this could be pretty cool, I thought. Turns out I was wrong. You just shoot the rocket with water. Here, watch the commercial yourself, because I can’t explain it very well. One of the selling points for the Spray Rocket Racer is that it goes “272 scale miles per hour!” WTF are “scale miles per hour”? How fast the car goes in relation to its size, maybe, but who the eff made that up?

Inspired by the commercials, I looked up ’90s toy commercials to see what kind of crap I fell for when I was growing up. It looked like this (I had Alvin), this (which I kept around until I was at least 10) and this (I can still sing this song, too!). Okay, so I guess I bought into some stupid kid stuff, too. Amazingly, though, despite his apparent hypnotic skills (watch the kids in the commercial), I never had a Teddy Ruxpin. He looks like he’d be one of those stuffed animals that sits in the corner, gathering dusts and haunting your dreams. *shudders*