BEST. GIFTS. EVER. Advent Calendar Day 14: The Miracle of Birth…

Best Gifts Ever

Today’s entry in our BEST. GIFTS. EVER. advent calendar comes courtesy of everyone’s favorite NonPro Perennial Princess, Miss Samantha Little!

Puppy Surprise by Playskool (1991)

You very own puppy mill.
Your very own puppy mill.

Longtime fans of the network might remember Puppy Surprise as a recurring topic of discussion on early episodes on Non-Productive. Sam Little loved these things growing up, and it was her gateway into a style of toys I’ll call “surprise collectibles.” Basically, a Puppy Surprise (and later, Kitty Surprise) was a stuffed mother dog that had a variable number of puppies inside it. To me, it always seemed a little gross; I never wanted to think of the insides of my stuffed toys let alone their reproductive systems. Plus, there were never any father’s involved, so it contributed to the moral decay of America.

As the commercial above explains, each dog could contain three, four, or even five puppies inside! Come on, everyone, help contribute to the explosion of the pet population! Apparently, only one-in-five toys had four or five puppies, so my lawyer instincts suggest that a near infinitesimal number of dogs had the lucky number five.

Once upon a time, back when we did shows regularly in New Brunswick, NJ, I wanted to purchase two identical Puppy Surprise toys and foster the puppies of one inside the other. The end goal was to have one Puppy Surprise that had anywhere between six and ten puppies in it, all to give as a super surprise gift for Sam. Co-host Lindsey Saultz and I would laugh as Sam pulled endless puppies from her toy, and eventually the entire thing would end up tossed in Studio B as yet another really strange piece of studio decoration. Alas, that never happened, but I’ve heard that Sam Little is currently hording the toys in whatever secret bunker she’s hiding out in until this “Obama” thing blows over. And no, I don’t know what that means.

Got a fond gift memory you’d like to share? Simply email [email protected] and ask us about writing a guest post!

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