The Mother Load

I feel like I've come full circle with today's Stupid Product.  In many ways, it reminds me of the Placenta Teddy Bear, the first Stupid Product I ever reviewed on this blog.  Like that Frankenstein-esque product, the Tooth Fairy Keepsake Box is an example of parental devotion gone wrong.  It's a sweet little box in which parents can save each precious baby tooth their child loses, glued into place on a mock mouth...like something you might see at a shark exhibit, only less pointy.

Parents, you don't have to keep everything your child ever did, ever.  Little Timmy had his appendix out when he was ten?  Let the doctor put it in a biohazard bag and be done with it.  Jenny needed her tonsils removed for sleep apnea?  No need to immortalize them in a jar of formaldehyde.  She's better off without them.  Austin lost a finger in an unfortunate firework accident?  I can assure you an urn with the ashes on his bedside table will only creep him out. 


I know what you're thinking.  Teeth are not placentas or fingers or tonsils.  Parents all over the country sneak into their kids' bedrooms late at night, money in hand, and pluck lost teeth from under pillows like clandestine, body part treasure hunters.  If we're willing to handle the teeth while we're on Tooth Fairy duty, why not put them in a little box and preserve them?

Well, for one thing, and this cannot be overstated, it's yucky.  If presented with a full set of my baby teeth glued into place on a  "mock mouth," I would not giggle delightedly and hold the box to my heart like a long lost friend.  I would very likely yelp in horror and drop the teeth on the floor.  Because, ew. Also? Bluch. Furthermore, what the heck? 

Of course, aside from the yuck factor, there's the problem of long term viability of such a keepsake.  Mother Load reader Kami J. of Idaho Falls, ID, tells me that when she was presented with all of her saved baby teeth as an adult, they immediately turned to powder after being shaken in their container.  Without some process of accelerated fossilization, those choppers aren't going to last.  And I don't know about you, but powdered teeth seem even more yucky to me than intact ones.

Finally, there are the hazards facing any collector.  Will you manage to find all the teeth?  Will you remember to play Tooth Fairy before each little nub disappears.  (The Tooth Fairy at my house, for instance, has resorted to just taking their word for it, because she just doesn't carry cash that often.)  What will you do if your child accidentally swallows a tooth.  Wait...wait.  Don't answer that.  I really, REALLY don't want to know.

The one thing this product has going for it is the price.  It's under $10, so if you're a parent who feels the need to hang onto every last tooth that falls out of your child's head, at least you won't have to fork over too much money for the opportunity to gross out your offspring with cataloged tooth powder when they're grown.  When your children look at you in disgust and say, "Why would you do this?" you will at least have gotten a good deal.

Remember that when your kids present you with a full set of your bronzed colon polyps on your birthday.

(Thanks to Taffi "Yes, that's my real name" P. of Caldwell, ID, for today's Stupid Product idea.  It's amazing to me that someone with a name as sweet as Taffi could cause me to vomit so spectacularly.)