Island of misfit toys. . .

A month ago one of my wife's students bought a Tickle Me Cookie Monster doll for our son's first birthday, a sweet gesture, but Cookie doesn't work. That doesn't matter because our little man LOVES him and drags him around the house all the time.

Then, Christmas day, Elmo Live arrives at our house and sings and dances when you touch him in various places (don't go there). So now our little investigator wants to know what's wrong with Cookie. He pushes on Cookie's feet and belly and nothing happens. He really wants Cookie to talk or sing or dance.

Elmo's cool and all, but he falls over a lot, is noisy (and by that I don't mean the talking, I mean the gears), and now he clicks when he moves. He's like a little, red, arthritic, old man who likes to tell the same boring story over and over and over. . .

So I called Fisher Price about these issues, as well as our creepy music from the Rainforest TV. They are sending a shipping label to return and receive a new Elmo Live, a Gift Certificate/Coupon for Cookie, and a new Rainforest TV. They were so cool about it all I didn't even complain about the bathtub-toy basket that won't stick to our bathtub.

After receiving this great news we hunted for a bit and found a Tickle Me Cookie of clearance at Toys Be We. We swapped it for the original and let him go. . . despite all of Elmo's fancy tricks Cookie still wins, hands down. So the new Cookie is ruling the toy kingdom while the chattering Elmo is on his way back to the mothership.