By FEI WU
Consumer Correspondent

Shortly after this photo was taken, Wang was admitted to hospital with eye injuries (LOLA)

DONGGUAN (China Daily Show) – A seemingly worthless compound of plastic, rubber and outdated electronics has become the season’s essential holiday gift, for no apparent reason.

The Wangle™, a cuboid bauble that children can discard, dismantle or injure others with as they wish, has helped revitalize a  toy industry in the doldrums.

The Wangle™ is the brainchild of Guangdong entrepreneur and factory owner Wang Li (pictured, right), and comes in a full range of exciting colors: green, red, pink, red and green.

Delighted CEO Wang says that he came up with the idea for the Wangle™ after reading about China’s vast manufacturing overcapacity.

“So many factories are out there, making bespoke bits and pieces for specific products for which there is no longer an overseas demand. I thought, ‘Why not put all these excess pieces of pointless plastic together – and make something both vital and completely non-consequential?’”

The toy company’s slogan – “Absolutely no refunds” – seems to symbolize this simple, no-nonsense message.

Yet stocks of the Wangle™ are already said to be in short supply, amid protests over working conditions and pay disputes in China. Nearly half a million Wangles™ were lost in a factory fire in late November, which also killed 32 employees.

The parent company, Wang’s Harmless Toys, has denied any problems, saying they are “simply waiting a little longer this year before we begin churning this thing out. What – you know any different?”

Blanket advertising has made most parents’ lives a living, walking hell

Flustered Wisconsin mother Beverly Walton, 36, said she has visited three Wal-Marts and two Toys R’ Us over the last week in her fruitless hunt for the Wangle™, which the company warns is “unsuitable for use with house pets, small children, humans or animals.”

“They told me they had plenty in stock but when I arrived, there were no Wangles™, just a long line of angry moms,” said Walton. “It’s almost as if they were deliberately screwing with us in order to manufacture demand for a decidedly superfluous item… Wait, I gotta run! Monica just texted me Macy’s has new stock.”

Consumer groups have advised parents that they can avoid unwanted peer pressure for the Wangle™ by withdrawing children from school, disconnecting all telecommunication devices and quarantining themselves within some kind of subterranean bunker.

Despite parental doubts, however, children across the continental United States were yesterday insisting that purchasing the Wangle™ was a no-brainer decision this Christmas, and would likely remain so until December 28 at the earliest.

“This is going to be a prerequisite for leaving the house and looking my fellow tweens in the eye,” said 12-year-old neighborhood bully Arnold Tuttle. “And I cannot see this not being the case until, at least, maybe the first week of next year?”

However, environmentalists are already warning that the Wangle™ – which Wang claims is “100% non-disposable” – could bring screams of terror along with wails of glee to the Christmas celebrations.

“Who knows what the Wangle™ might do? It’s pointless, completely un-recyclable and has not passed a single safety test,” said Greenpeace spokesman Anita Joan. “Anything could happen.”

“Exactly,” responded Wang. “Kids love surprises!”

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A Wangle ad inspiring nostalgia for traditional times, when toys used to be made in Hong Kong

by SHENG DANJIE
Consumer Correspondent

Shoppers peruse novelty Noel bollocks

DONGGUAN (China Daily Show) – The West may be facing its least-tacky Christmas in living memory, thanks to the recent slump in Chinese exports.

The ongoing Eurozone crisis, combined with disappointing unemployment figures from the US, have reduced demand for cheap, plastic seasonal ornaments manufactured in China by an estimated 46%, a recent World Bank report says.

Manufacturers in China are consequently feeling the pinch.

Hundreds of production lines in the Zhejiang and Guangdong factories, that produce the unsightly plastic bullshit which festoons European and American homes every year, are said to be standing idle.

Experts say this could mean the West’s most tasteful Christmas period in over two decades – when China first began to manufacture camp festive trinkets on an industrial scale in 1991, according to market analysts.

Market researcher Anders Hönigsen says that the recession will harm nearly all sectors of the Yuletide tat industry.

“Internally illuminated plastic dioramas of the first Nativity, multi-coloured spray-snow globes and animatronic, talking Santas: you name it,” Hönigsen told China Daily Show. “You won’t be seeing much of this crap in landfill come next year.”

This tacky fire hazard could become a thing of the past

First to feel the pinch will be the retailers of spindly, pathetic, artificial Christmas trees (pictured, left), experts say.

“These items already represented an utterly fruitless purchase for over 60% of median-income American and European households,” Hönigsen said. “Fortunately, they have now become unaffordable as well.”

With holly-and-ivy prices stagnant, a European mistletoe glut and reports of unprecedented three-for-one offers on IKEA pine-scented wax candles, it seems that – like it or not – many Western families will this year be spending the upcoming Christmas period surrounded by low-key, traditional decorations that can be recycled, and later enjoyed, again and again.

The thought has struck fear in the heart of the commercial sector.

Factory bosses are already hoping to reassure foreign importers that, at the last minute, Western consumers can probably be counted upon to revert to type and mindlessly purchase valueless ornaments – manufactured using precious mineral reserves – to ensure a Christmas as commercialized and soulless as any other.

RIP traditional headwear. But what will women wear now?

“We’re delaying our annual, tasteless churn-out until all our orders are through,” claimed Wang Li, president of Wang’s Harmless Toys, a tat company based in Dongguan, Guangdong province. “Waiting stimulates demand, which guarantees production of endless cut-price kitsch.”

Business leaders in Europe are appealing for families spending the holiday season together not to focus on the simple, homespun pleasures of Christmas, but instead to remember the importance of arguing over how much was spent.

“We may need to ratchet up future advertising, so next year’s Christmas marketing bonanza begins in, say, late August rather than early September,” said Alan de Soto of the European Retailers Association.

“Otherwise, we will be faced with the ugly spectre of a so-called modern Christmas – one with homes garlanded by holly, candles burning on the mantlepiece, carols sung around a living, natural tree, and the restrained enjoyment of good food and drink in the bosom of one’s family,” de Soto shuddered. “That’s not what Christmas is all about.”

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An Asian child puts the finishing fake touches to a uniquely shitty tree

By LAO SHOUXING
History Correspondent

Lord Shang (390-338 BC) enjoyed the occasional slay ride

XIAN (China Daily Show) – He may be as American as apple pie and as much a part of Christmas as the latest Call of Duty but according to one scholar, the real Santa Claus was actually Chinese.

Using information found in his attic, and backed-up by extensive research online, historian and sanitation worker Lin Kang has traced Santa’s history to 223 BC – and the Middle Kingdom.

Lord Shang Ke was an ancient figure, famous as the first man to codify China’s legal system in his Book of Law. Santa Claus is most likely a Roman bastardization of ‘Shang Ke’s Laws,’ Lin believes.

Said to have roamed the country during the early Qin Dynasty, dispatching “bribes to those who were naughty and punishments to those who were nice,” Shang is revered in schools today as the father of Chinese autocracy.

But the draconian Shang was also famed for ramming dissenting scholars into chimneys and roasting them alive, and enslaving Japanese tourists – or “dwarf people” – to do his bidding.

Lin says these traditions were spoilt by Westerners, who instead made Shang – or “Santa” – an avuncular figure, whose elf-run workshops deposit Japanese-made electronic goods on the hearths of well-behaved children.

“Shang ran a sweatshop and he ran it good,” said Lin. “The irony is the tradition has now come full circle. We churn out cheap, lead-based goods to be consumed by gullible foreign children. As a consequence, we’re  the world’s number-one export economy. Shang would probably have approved –but if he didn’t, he’d have chopped your head off.”

The real-life Shang was eventually executed after falling out of imperial favor, and supposedly torn asunder by horses. Lin speculates this might explain the “reindeer thing.”

The tradition was most likely stolen during the chaotic civil war that followed the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Lin says. Visiting executives from the fledgeling Coca Cola Company allegedly paid 400 taels for the recipe to an ancient medicinal brew called kela – the story of Lord Shang was later appropriated by the firm’s Shanghai advertising department.

“Foreigners stole our land, our precious artifacts and our tyrannical historical figures,” Lin lamented. “They can keep the vases but we want the good stuff back.”

Shang’s modern ancestors have announced they intend to sue Coke for copyright infringement but IPR lawyers suggest the family may be willing to settle the case for a large quantity of Sprite.

And while some experts have questioned the veracity of the claims, Lin says documents proving his theory have been authenticated by none other than historians Hugh Trevor-Roper and Gavin Menzies.

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