Easy-Bake Coven
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #181. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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A tongue-in-cheek but also painfully earnest look at pop culture and anything else that deserves to be ridiculed while at the same time regarded with the utmost respect. It is written by Matt Marrone and emailed to Stu Horvath and David Shimomura, who add any typos or factual errors that might appear within.
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Welcome to November. By now, Unwinnable’s October suburban horror issue has had time to slowly fade from your nightmares. But don’t get a sense of false security: There’s something I’ve since discovered as frightening as any of the everyday evils we uncovered in these pages last month. And it’s coming for your children.
My sons, Jacob (9) and Peter (6) spend much of their TV time these days watching ABDALLAHSMASH play videogames on Kidoodle.TV. They watch him play Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Princess Peach: Showtime!
He’s engaging enough, and the show itself is relatively harmless. But it isn’t the show – it’s the commercials. Because the streaming app is free, brief ads pop up every few minutes. They’re mostly the same ones, again and again, and they’re exactly what’d you expect: cheap toys for young children. Annoying and typical. Except for one. There is one that isn’t at all typical, though it tries to hide it behind a veneer of capitalistic fluff. It’s cursed, and we’ve come to believe it represents a threat not only to our children but perhaps to all of mankind.
The commercial is for a product called Cookeez Makery. There are two versions of the ad – one involving a pancake pan (the Pancake Treatz Playset) and the other a freezer (the Freezy Cakez Playset). Both ads follow the same script: Child actors, likely unaware that their paychecks are signed personally by Satan, mix up some batter. They then either add it to the pancake pan or the freezer, flip the pan or open the freezer door after a time . . . and are delighted to discover that the batter has turned into a plushy animal toy.
It’s hard to put into words the surreal horror of this toy. Perhaps there is simply a sleight of hand that whisks away the batter and replaces it with a stuffed animal? (The concept of that alone would be creepy enough.) But the transformations, as shown, are, if you believe in such things, a blasphemy to God. If you’re not religious, it’s at least an affront to the laws of nature.
I have told my children as much. Last Sunday, my wife was making waffles in a waffle-maker and I said, with all sincerity, that if she were to open it and a stuffed animal popped out, I would run for the front door and they would never see me again. I also told them I believe it might only be the beginning of what Cookeez Makery (and Satan) has planned. These stuffed-pancakes and stuffed-cakes are soft, pillowy demons designed to replace – with an ostensibly innocuous twinkle – not only all baked goods . . . but all of us.
You think I’m joking. My kids sure do. They call me into the room when the commercials come on, my youngest going so far as to hold my eyelids open, A Clockwork Orange-style, so I can’t look away. And perhaps I am being a bit sarcastic. But please: Do not buy these products. I am sincere about that much at least – they aren’t right. The stuffed animals are disquieting at best, nightmare-fuel at worst. And, if you do insist on buying them, or your children finally break you down (or use their own money, Lord help us all) and random things in your home start popping into stuffed animals . . . do I what I plan to do: run!!!
If you survive an attack, or simply fear one and want to take action, share this column on social media. Alert your local representatives. And if you hear a soft, cuddly toy voice on the other end of the line, know that it’s probably too late.
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Matt Marrone is a senior MLB editor at ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning Rookie of the Year since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.
