Who thinks up this crap?

People who once used their Stretch Armstrong doll to tie off their arm before spiking off to heaven with the syringe supplied in the Playskool doctor kit.

Didn't anyone else's Teddy Ruxpin describe exactly how to make crystal meth? I guess it was just mine then.

My Transformer changed into a bong

The campaign comes after recent studies in Austria found more and more children are growing up in families in which one or both parents drink too much alcohol and the number of teenagers developing problems with alcohol and drugs is growing.

So obviously the childrens' toys are the problem.

clearly!

Damn fucking Sit-and-Spin!

Toys? My "gateway" was "press on your eyeballs until you see weird shit".

I think I started doing that when I was about two years old.

I also thoroughly enjoyed spinning around until I puked. Then there was the audio "flanging" of my hearing by rapidly plugging and unplugging my ears with my fingers.

Then I got hooked on listening closely to the "noise" in my oldschool electronics toys. The, uh, like... background modulation in the sounds of the bleepy toys and stuff, back when audio synthesis was still hard/expensive to do, so they did it in PCM or FM with hideously slow clock rates and sample rates.

Then there was that Heathkit Microprocessor lab my step-dad brought home from class at Control Data or DeVry's or something. I started probing that thing with a pair headphones wired to a set of test leads. Bleep. Bloop.

And Lego. Fuckin' Lego. They should ban that shit if they're going to ban anything.

Tetris, too. Ever play Tetris for so long you started hallucinating and visualizing how to "pack space" everywhere you looked? I know you have. Big blocks falling from space filling in all the gaps in between buildings and houses, rocks and trees, whatever, anything to make it all nice and smooth and flat except for that single line eagerly - even sexually - awaiting the holy "Tetris" tetrimino.

I remember when I first bought a GameBoy, I think it was still the first year they came out, '88 or '89 or something. I bought it at Toys R Us, I went outside, I sat down on the curb, I feverishly tore open the shrink wrap, plonked in the batteries, and started playing Tetris. Then the batteries died and I had to go inside and buy more. I think I would have had to go buy a third set, but it was well after dark and Toys R Us had closed, so I had to walk home and buy some more at the minimart.

I wake up 10 years later and the next thing I knew I was up to my sweat-chafed nipples in LSD, speakers, and sweaty rave scum. Fifty years of Sunshine, indeed.

My "gateway" was "press on your eyeballs until you see weird shit"...I also thoroughly enjoyed spinning around until I puked. Then there was the audio "flanging" of my hearing by rapidly plugging and unplugging my ears with my fingers.

Except for the "spinning and puking", I was right there with you as a child, and apparently right there with you again 10 years later.

My "gateway" was "press on your eyeballs until you see weird shit"
I still do that. In the shower, usually.