I don’t know why dentists don’t give their toys out until right before you leave. They should give their toys out when you get there. That way, your kids have something to do in the waiting room.
No, they get to lick the same toy all the other patients licked.
I guess I get why they don’t give out the superballs early. Superballs are single use. Basically, as soon as they started putting superballs in the toy chests, this question went out the window.
Also, the last thing they want is your toy showing up in the X-ray.
I suppose the reason they don’t give the prizes out at the beginning is that kids take forever to pick. This way, at some point the parents say, “Okay, just chose one. We have to go.” Whereas if they did it beforehand, the kids would spend forever touching everything in the box, like the geniuses ahead of you in line at the restaurant who think people have to get to the very front of the line in order to start reading the menu.
That said, here’s a list of the prizes that are likely to be in the box so that your kids can decide ahead of time what they want. You can read it to them if you find this magazine in your dentist’s waiting room, IY”H, in let’s say ten years from now.
Paratrooper – This toy combines two things that little kids love: army men and skydiving. For maximum enjoyment, wait until your child starts throwing them out the upstairs window.
Finger trap – This is basically just half of a lulav holder. Great for a child who is confident in his ability to talk his friends into putting their fingers in both ends, these work in a similar fashion to how if you try pulling hadassim out once you have them in the holder, they lose all their leaves. That’s how they get you. But meanwhile the aravos are falling out the bottom the entire yom tov.
Spider ring – This is a fake spider for pranking people, but the only way to get it to stand straight is to wear it on your finger. Is it supposed to scare people into thinking you have a spider on you own finger? But what are your other choices? Slip it onto people while they’re sleeping? It doesn’t even fit most fingers. Give your wife a ring box for your anniversary and she opens it and sees a spider? You’re the one losing that prank.
Jumping frog – This is a flat frog for which you push down the backside and it jumps, exactly like a real frog would! A lot of people keep these around for Pesach so they can use them for Tzefardeia. I don’t know which other prizes can be used for makkos – I guess superballs bouncing around the room for Barad, gauze for Dam, Kinim is easy…
Sticky hand – that immediately loses its stickiness. Either way, it’s a great toy for slapping people from across the room. Practically, it’s for picking up papers that you drop. Though more likely you’ll drop a whole stack of papers, so you can sit there the rest of the afternoon, picking them up one at a time.
SLAP!
“I missed. Now it has dust. I have to go wash it.”
Soap makes it stickier somehow.
In our circles, they should maybe call them “Basya arms”.
“Hey, there’s a baby out there!” SLAP.
“Okay, I’m trying again. I got a frog that time.”
It’s also great for lazy parents with chutzpadik kids.
“He’s still being chutzpadik! Try to get the soap!”
Little ball maze – with a cardboard back that comes off. This maze is way too easy, unless it’s the kind with more than one ball, in which case it’s impossible. There is no in between. Sometimes the maze is shaped like a watch, in case your kid who doesn’t wear a watch to tell time wants to wear one with a dumb game he can play in class.
Top – I have to ask: Does anyone ever pick the top? Yeah, that’s what I want from this box. What is the appeal of this? You spin it, you watch it spin… It’s not even like a dreidel; there are no sides for it to land on. It’s just the top part. (Oh, now I get it.)
Tiny slinky – The one fun thing about a slinky, other than trying to fix it by going around and around until you realize it’s a lost cause and then storing the broken slinky for several years in case it fixes itself, is making it go down the stairs. This one cannot do that. And the heart or star shape doesn’t help. It’s called physics. Basically, it’s just a small representation that reminds you of a toy that used to be fun until they weren’t allowed to make them out of metal anymore. Has anyone ever successfully done this with even a full-sized plastic one? Do they even test this? You put it at the top of the stairs and it goes down one step, and then flops over on its side and rolls to the wall.
Small Maracas – Great for making noise for Haman in a relatively quiet shul. It’s less about stomping out his name and more about giving him non-threatening ethnic background entrance music. It’s Haman (rattle rattle rattle)!
Erasers – that don’t actually work. They just call them erasers. Great if you want to replace a pencil mistake on your paper with a black streak and a hole.
Tiny back scratchers – that barely reach anything and then immediately snap and the scratchy end gets lost down your back. What kid is like, “Forget all these toys; I need to scratch my back”?
Porcupine balls – These are supposed to be like mini Koosh balls, but again, that concept doesn’t work if they’re tiny. So instead, they look like corona.
Ice cream – Another prank, this is a foam ice cream on a plastic cone where you release a switch and the foam flies up and hits your “friend” in the face, provided he is close enough that the foam will reach him despite the string.
So it’s like, “Look at my ice cream!”
“It’s clearly fake.”
“Yeah, but reeeeally look at it. Get in there.”
“Why?”
“Closer.”
“It’s a foam ball. But why’s there a bite taken out of—?”
“Great, I missed.”
Fake moustache – In the kid’s mind, he puts on these fake glasses and plastic shiny crooked nose, and he’s completely unrecognizable to everyone -- just another 3-year-old with a massive adult nose that doesn’t match his skin tone and empty glasses frames and a moustache. Why a moustache? I tell you – sometimes I shave everything but my moustache, and no one knows who I am. My kids start crying, my wife calls the cops…
Stamp – This is great if you want little circles of the same picture on everything you own, particularly the walls. The kid uses it on a piece of paper a couple of times and realizes that’s not where the fun is, and then it’s everywhere.
Slap bracelet – This is a sharp piece of tape measure that they cover in cloth, and it involves the two things that kids of both genders enjoy: slapping and bracelets! I don’t know why they don’t make slap bracelets out of real jewelry that you can give to your wife.
“Look, it combines your two favorite things!... What?! No, jewelry and tape measures!”
Whistle – This prize is a large reason dentists give out prizes at the end. This is actually a prize that they save for the kids who misbehave in order to teach the parents a lesson. Or in case your kid wants to get a start as a head counselor. I actually saw this whistle in something called a “classroom treasure box”. What genius novice teacher is giving out whistles? These whistles will end up living in your toy closet until the end of time because no one wants to put it in their mouth because who knows who else did? I would say the same for picking it out of the dentist bin, except that whoever might have tried it at least had their teeth brushed really well first. That’s another reason they offer the prizes afterward. In fact, I’m starting to think that many these toys are not a reward for the kids but a punishment for the parents. It’s about noise or cleaning up or dealing with upset children who demand to get their toy replaced by going right back to the dentist. And you can’t buy them one because you can’t get just one. You can only buy them in multiples of 100. Unless you go to Dave and Busters and play 3 hours of Skee Ball.
Is there anything here that you want 100 of in your home?
Of course, occasionally, you’ll stumble across something really good that isn’t on this list, like the dentist dropped his phone in there. “I don’t think this is the prize box. I think it’s the lost and found.” In fact, the dentist can actually start just putting out the lost and found box if he wants to save money while at the same time cleaning up his office. “Listen, sheifeleh, pick something; we have to go. You can have the mitten, the phone charger, or the pacifier. Wait, I want this.”
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
