Doggie Doo

I recently discovered that I once began a sentence by saying "given my love for all things bodily functions". ^[src!]
Even through the ups and downs of life, it's always uplifting to know I once began a sentence with an outrageous concoction of words like that.

Not that it's the most accurate of sentences, though. My love for bodily functions is very specific. For instance, that sentence originally referred to having to shoot an apatosaurus in the butt so it didn't drop titanic stinkers all over your jeep. If I were given one reason to love bodily functions, it'd be for a hilarious scenario like that. Everyday bodily functions are a much less interesting subject and not worthy of humour or admiration - which is why this board game (that's been advertised something fierce on television the past few weeks) has caught my eye.

It's about dog shit. Literal dog shit.

Judging from the commercial, you get a big plastic dog and you feed it plasticine. Then you'd press on a funnel until it exits the back passage, and you're tasked with picking it up again.
... how does one even finish a sentence like that?

Despite watching the commercial more times than I would have preferred, I could never actually figure out what the object of the game was. An excited narrator would open the commercial by exclaiming "It's Doggie Doo! SCOOP! THAT! POO!" and if he said any words after that, they were lost on me - the sight of a loud and colourful commercial extolling the virtues of canine excrement would leave me in a daze, and by the time I woke up I'd be seeing commercials for decapitated doll's heads. But that's a story for another time.

So it made me wonder... really, that's it? Make a board game out of dogs pooing? That means you could make any old mundane everyday activity and sell it on the aisles of Toys R Us for approximately £15 (around £30 or more if you include a large, unnecessary piece of articulated plastic in there). Give me a year and I'll see if I can get a board game published about trying to catch the bus. If that doesn't pan out, then I'm sure they'll be interested in Mr. Gnasher's Filthy Choppers. You can't beat a game about brushing big plastic teeth.

It was only after recording the ad (NOT INTENTIONALLY) that I finally discovered what the game's objective is, printed on the box:

"Feed and walk your little dog, and if he poops, you scoop that poop! ...the first to 3 wins!"

Players take turns throwing a dice, which determines how many times they squeeze the pump. In essence, it's a bizarre, poop-orientated version of Russian Roulette, except instead of trying to avoid getting a bullet in a skull, you're aiming to collect as many as possible. The first player with three entry wounds is the victor!

You know what happens when you're walking a dog with a group of associates, and you're the one obligated with poo patrol? You get nicknames. Not even good nicknames. We're talking Smelly Hands, or Brown Thumb, or Poopy Doo, or Crappy Doo. And on rare occasions, Hong Kong Pooey. Names that sound like they came from the lower, forgotten ranks of James Bond's rogues' gallery.
The kind of terrible names that everyone else finds funny but are so dreadfully dire that you ponder, "you know what? I should never have picked up that poo in the first place. What harm is it doing there? The Earth has survived just fine with families of canidae banging shits since the late Paleocene era without the need for garish red bins or little black plastic baggies. NO NICKNAMES FOR ME."

But the adventure doesn't end there! What makes the game so incredible is that it's got the whole kit'n'kaboodle of online marketing! It's got regional websites, it's got a YouTube account, you can Like it on Facebook - it's even got a Twitter feed! The official website deserves praise because it gives us the development history of Doggie Doo. Yes, Doggie Doo has a conceptual history to share with us. Apparently, most publishers didn't agree with their theory that more toy stores need shitting dogs on the shelves.

There's also an official YouTube video of a man taking the Doggie Doo into various establishments and using it as a conversation piece. I try to be polite, but it's... shockingly unfunny. Not that he's working with the best material, though - a plastic dog that poops isn't exactly a comedy goldmine. Heck, if I didn't have my hyperbole or exaggerated personal anecdotes, we'd only be two paragraphs in by now! (speaking of personal anecdotes, have I ever told you about the pink flourescent vomit? it's hilarious. this one time I was on a plane, and I was eating a lot of Chewits...)

There's also a Flash game of Doggie Doo. I was expecting a computer-based "trial" version of the real deal, where you and your chums gather around the monitor taking turns clicking on the bladder until virtual dung is excreted for mad scores. Instead, the Flash game is MUCH MORE EXTREME.

So there's this dog, right? And it shits STRAIGHT UP INTO THE SKY. And it expects you to grab these flourescent yellow droppings with your tiny blue spade before they splat on the grass. And it's so amused by you catching them than it performs somersaults.
This turns the entire dog-and-master relationship on its head. Rather than just picking up the dog's excrement out of respect for other walkers, the dog turns it into a sick challenge. "You think you can pick up after me? How about when I'm shooting my shit up to twelve yards away? Who's the master now, huh? JUMP, FAT BOY, JUMP."
A world of projectile excrement would be a world gone topsy-turvy.

Well, what more can I possibly say? I've written nearly a thousand words on a plastic dog that funnels coloured plasticine out of its back passage, including its televised commercial, its online marketing campaign, and its grotesque Flash game accompaniment. If I were to write any more I'd probably find myself authoring Doggie Doo: The Unabridged Guide.
That's the kind of unfortunate achievement they usually put on your epitaph.