plush.

There are many things in life that I don’t understand. American foreign policy. The Brussels city metro map. Nickelback. Corporate men in tailored Italian suits carrying nylon backpacks. Teddy bears.

Of all the useless, unwanted gifts I have received in my life (and this is by no means a small number) nothing ranks higher than the teddy bear. Or plush animals of any species, in fact. I’m not discriminatory. I am proud to be an equal opportunist regarding my fervent disdain towards mounds of foam crammed inside polyester fur casings.

It seems that the teddy bear has become today’s go-to gift for any occasion. It’s a retailer’s dream: design one generic product and stick it into an appropriate costume and it becomes perfectly marketable for any season or event. Various little cleverly designed outfits and accessories make them chameleons instantly appropriate for birthdays, Christmases, graduations, baptisms, Bar or Bat Mitzahs, and naturally the promise land of consumer whoredom: Valentine’s Day. Of course I’m sure that not every attempt to universally market the teddy bear has been greeted with the same degree of success that the top hat wearing, rose-clutching Valentine’s Day bear has enjoyed. Easter teddy, for example. The real reason that we have the seemingly randomly selected Easter Bunny carrying a basket of eggs is because little teddy nailed to a crucifix wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves. The same is true for the doomed to obscurity ‘happy divorce’ teddy, complete with a tiny plastic cleaver jammed between his ears.

What exactly is one supposed to do with plush animals once maturing beyond (or at least running out of free time for) arranging stuffed toys nicely around a miniature table so they can mingle whilst presumably sharing tea, cucumber sandwiches, and hot stock trading tips? I was once given a plush pony which my cat quite warmed up to – if you can call his python-like stuffing of the pony’s head into his seemingly dislocated jaw and dragging it triumphantly around my flat “warming up to”. At least it had a use and gave someone some pleasure that didn’t involve than clawing up my sofa. Normally, under the pangs of guilt for relegating a gift immediately into the trash, one winds up displaying the furry object on a desk, or atop a bookcase where it proceeds to sit with beady eyes, menacingly staring down at you and all else it surveys.

In actuality, it’s probably doing much worse than playing the judgmental, albeit passive, voyeur. Not only is it wasting precious table top or shelf space, its soft furry exterior has become a veritable Hilton for dust, germs, candle or cigarette smoke, pet hair, and spores. It might well smile and look sweetly down upon you with glassy doe eyes, but I’m not fooled. Amass enough of these thoughtless gifts and I'm convinced, they will do their best to kill you from the lungs outward. I aspire to start selling teddy bears that double as air filters. The plush exterior would be capable of osmosis bringing all the air pollutants collected inside it so they can sit on a shelf being useful for a few months until their filtering powers are used up and they can be tossed guiltlessly into the trash. Now that’s a gift.

With the current state of the gifting market, if you live long enough and are popular enough with acquaintances and other meaningless gifters, the barrage of plush toys will eventually prove detrimental to your health. When buying someone a teddy bear as a last minute gift, few shoppers consider that the ultimate product for the end user is an appointment in their agenda for lying in a hospital room hooked up to beeping machines and dripping IV bags, breathing hoarsely through a tube in their trachea. Lying alone and silently cursing everyone who ever gave them a little germ bag sewn up in a soft furry casing. Death has come. Death, by plush.