Homer Simpson's favourite toy?

Y'know what's a lot of fun? Play-Doh!

Mold it, shape it, make monsters and space ships and silly faces with it -- you can spend hours and hours, and never make the same thing twice. Play-Doh is the thing that makes even the most untalented among us feel vaguely artistic (and in a good way). Heck, it's even fun just squishing it between your fingers, or pounding it flat on the table, or rolling it out into a long, thin piece (and calling it a snake, to appease the little artist inside you).

The colours are appealing, bright-enough and friendly-enough that you can't help but smile. And who can forget the smell? Wave a little Play-Doh under someone's nose, and they're immediately transported back to the most idyllic moments of their childhood. Heck, they even made a perfume that smelled like Play-Doh once.

(Oh, darling, you smell... you smell... you smell like Play-Doh? Let me squeeze you!)

Personally, when I played with Play-Doh as a kid, I wasn't all that fond of the machines you could get to work with it. I had the basic extruder, with the different shapes like stars and rectangles and such. I once made the American Flag that way, but otherwise, I was more fascinated with the extrusino process that what was eventually produced.

No, my favourite thing to make was monsters. How many limbs could a single creature support? What if it had a whole bunch of eyes? How many teeth can I fit in this mouth? Could I even make the thing stand up with legs that skinny? Yeah, that was me, playing god.

Gods and monsters? Sounds like a movie, doesn't it?


Hg