S. Virtes - Last of the Soft Things

When young Amy Walters bit the nose off her stuffed bunny, Puff, and swallowed it, she had no way of knowing that she was about to change the world.

Mom Walters was lounging in the fat chair with a bag of Oreo cookies. She looked at the baby, who was suddenly quiet. “Bob, does the baby look funny to you?”

Bob put his beer can in its ring/stain on the lamp table, then unslouched and took a look. “Is this a trick question?”

“I mean, does she look… blue?”

“Everything looks blue. The TV’s on.”

Amy made a weird little choking sound, and Mom Walters flurried into action. She ran in circles around the room, screaming, “Oh my God!”

Bob got up, patted the baby on the back, and the bunny nose popped out. It stuck to the carpet, covered with drool. The baby seemed surprised. She thought about crying, then decided it wasn’t worth it, and snuggled against Bob’s chest instead. The crisis was over.

Mom Walters kept orbiting the sofa, waving her arms. When Bob calmed her down she spoke frankly. “Somebody’s going to hear about this!”

Donald Wheaton ran a clean business. He tried to keep his employees reasonably happy, though they were a demanding lot. As a child he had wanted to be an astronaut, like all the other kids, but after way too much school, the National Astronaut Waiting List was 10,000 pages long and there hadn’t been a mission in years. So he had to swallow his pride and get a real job. The first few years were rough, and he ended up living off of his doctoral thesis, which wasn’t so bad with milk and strawberries on it. He always thought of it as com flakes with little letters typed on the back. After several uneventful jobs, he grabbed a bank loan and started his own business: FooCo, manufacturer of “Fine Smooshy Things for Kids.” He employed 850 people, and had quite a reputation among the soft toy community.

His secretary, Jeremy, rapped on the door, then came into the office with a stack of mail.

Jeremy plopped the mail down on the desk. He knew the boss was just hanging around, spacing out, but he never had the nerve to say anything about it. “Uh, that top one came registered. Looks important.”

Don peeked at the envelope. It was from the District Attorney. He immediately felt a twinge of anti-curiosity. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was to open that envelope. He ran a good business. He was careful to make only smooshy things, because his legal advisor said solid objects were too risky. Now… why would the DA want to talk to him?

Don waved Jeremy out of the room, then stared at the envelope from three hundred different angles before taking a heavy breath and tearing it open.

He was being sued by a Stocktown group called Parents Against Lethal Crib-Things (a non-profit corporation), founded by Mom Walters.

His first reaction was natural: “Funny name for a mother,” he muttered. Then he realized that he was doomed.

The court battle was short and senseless. In the excerpts that follow, FooCo was represented by its legal advisor, Mac MacDonald, who tried his best to make sense of the accusations.

FOO: Because your daughter choked briefly on the severed nose of a FooCo bunny—one unit out of 400,000 sold—you are demanding the recall of every single unit sold to the public?

Would you explain your reasoning here?

MOM: They’re dangerous.

FOO: Did your child suffer any injury which might support your claim?

MOM: She choked! She could not breathe for almost an hour! Who knows what damage that might have caused to all those little growing brain cells?

FOO: Did you say “almost an hour”?

MOM: Well, I wasn’t exactly timing the episode. My stopwatch was in the bathroom.

FOO: According to your husband, the episode lasted less than fifteen seconds. Doesn’t that seem more likely?

MOM: He’s a pain in the ass.

FooCo brought in a forensic expert who argued that “during the course of development, die average child chokes on an average of 300 objects, 10 percent of which are larger than a bumblebee, and 0.004 percent are bumblebees… in summary, by the age of six, ordinary respiratory pauses included, a child spends 2,120 hours not breathing. The effect of an extra fifteen seconds can be seen as less than significant.”

FooCo lost the battle, of course. When more than 1/20 of a mother gets worried, the corporate sector has no chance. The verdict was short and direct, “Find every Mr. Bunnyhead in existence, and burn them.”

The recall took twenty-seven months, $1.3 million, 700 investigators, 85 Bunnyhead-seeking dogs, and a sneaky campaign of Easter bunny-trading. When they finally reported 99.99 percent recall, the State demanded better. “You mean that there are enough bunnies left out there to slaughter almost 0.0004 children?”

Mac checked his notes. “That’s 0.00027 children, according to the latest statistics from the Bunnyhead Threat Studies Commission.”

The State was firm. “Find them, or suffer the consequences. ”

“Consequences?” Mac thought, as he left the court building. “Imagine that!”

The last bunny was located in a landfill outside of Upside, Michigan. Mysteriously, it was in a trash stratum which local archaeologists dated at about 1964. Yet its remains were positively identified, using standard DNA fingerprinting. The recall was finally over.

For the first time in years, Donald Wheaton could relax. The long ordeal had cost him his wife, his membership in the Politically Correct Toymakers Guild, and years of media smearing.

He was gray, and his stomach was wracked with ulcers, but he tried to keep his cheer. After all, his only crime was wanting to give kids something to hug.

“Are you sure this last… thing… was actually a Bunnyhead?” he asked Mac.

“The DNA test said it was either a Bunnyhead, or an escaped convict from Detroit. Judging from the body mass of 122 grams, the convict matchup was considered spurious.”

Donald had to crack a smile. “I love it when expensive technology provides nice clear answers.”

“It’s a good thing you decided to stuff the toys with down, instead of some synthetic fiber. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been any DNA to play with. Good thinking.”

“Actually, I used down because a local manufacturer went out of business, and we could buy several tons of the stuff cheap. Plus it’s naturally soft and harmless.”

Mac looked less happy than before. “Oh.”

Donald clapped his hands together. “Cheer up! It’s finally over!”

Later that day, nauseated from the stench of 402,331 roasting Bunnyheads, Don invited his forty-two employees (all that were left) into the company meeting room, and unrolled the blueprints for Bunnybaby.

“As you know,” he announced, “we’ve had some time to develop a revolutionary new bunny-nose glue. We used it on our PandaThing last year, and so far, we’ve had no trouble with it. But kids like bunnies, and if we’re going to get back on the market, we need to get a new bunny in production, so let’s get on it. Bryan,” he patted his R&D man on the shoulder, “says he can have the stuffers configured by Friday.”

Bunnybaby hit the streets in March of 1997. Children everywhere, riding in shopping carts, grabbed the cuddly things from the shelves (strategically placed just-within-reach), and begged for a bunny to hug. Mothers and fathers checked the label, which read, “made in the USA by FooCo-II,” and, in microscopic print: “Nineteen bank loans later, thanks a lot!”