Goram Kinder Surprise.

When I was younger, I used to love Kinder Surprise. The chocolate itself is pretty disappointing, but I cared more for the prize hiding inside. The toys themselves are admittedly rather useless, but you don't buy a 99 cent chocolate egg expecting a remote controlled helicopter or a transformer - it's the excitement of opening the egg to see what you've gotten and assembling the pieces, adding stickers, etc., to end up with your tiny creation, that is why they were so cool. Bonus if you actually like the plastic chocolate.

I'm not sure if it's because I've grown up and become a little disillusioned, or if Kinder Surprise has just stopped producing good toys, these new ones are honestly lame. Most of them you don't even get to build anymore, it's all one piece, along with a confusing illustration that usually involves a couple kids having a great time chucking their new bit of plastic at a wall, or trying to throw it at their friend's equally useless bit of plastic. Most of the time the thing that tells you how to play with your toy requires you to have a friend with a toy from the same set, meaning you both have to go buy eggs until you each have one, and then proceed to play what appears to be one of the most boring and pointless games ever conceived.

Just the other day, I walked into my the cafeteria at my University, and they had a bunch of Kinder Surprise eggs. Hoping for a tiny car or perhaps a many-pieced animal I bought one, only to find a little plastic yellow thing that vaguely resembles a lion, and these instructions:
Step 1: Find a friend unfortunate enough to get one of these amorphous animals as well. Put your toys on a table, then blow on them.
Step 2: If your toy falls over, you win. Congratulations.

Gee, what a thrilling time. Sounds easy enough, right? The only problem is, aside from the fact that I could have just as much fun blowing on rocks or bits of wood, I couldn't even get the darn thing to stand up in the first place.

Shown here: my lion sitting on its head. I guess I won...?

It seems like the only things that you are able to 'build' from modern Kinder Surprises are tiny 12 piece puzzles. Because kids just love puzzles, am I right? This is what happens when child safety goes so far as to suck the fun out of things. Whatever happened to the little toy cars and boats and dragons with 8 pieces and stickers? I miss my childhood, and I feel sorry for the kids growing up in today's world of plastic playgrounds and rounded edges.