September 26, 2007:
I absolutely hated middle school, but it was important for at least one rite of passage: Dissecting a poor dead frog and ducking when its vital organs squirted a combination of formaldehyde and froggy juice at my face.
If I remember correctly, it all went down in the seventh grade. For a week or two prior to the big event, our science teacher -- a gritty, indifferent lady who was long rumored to be a drunk -- taught us all about frog anatomy through a series of slides, videos and poorly Xeroxed diagrams that always seemed to go light on the ink where it was needed most.
A couple of students protested what this was all leading up to, but not on account of animal rights: They just thought that slicing up dead frogs was icky. The rest of us couldn't wait. It wasn't because we were lovers of science or even because we were sadists at heart -- it's just that those slides, movies and Xeroxed diagrams made it all seem like so much...fun? I don't know. If any of us saw a dead frog on the ground somewhere, we'd go through tremendous trouble to avoid it. In class, waiting for our dead frog was akin to waiting for Christmas morning.
Things were a little different by the time we actually had the things in front of us. Watching dead frogs get gutted on a grainy, four foot projector screen was one thing, but having the little green dudes on our desks, spread eagle, was something else. Maybe two or three kids in the entire class approached the project as a regular, must-succeed school assignment. The rest of us were evenly split into camps of people who were grossed out and people who took pleasure in puppeting the frogs to torment the camp of people who were grossed out.
I did a little research this morning, if you consider a Google Image Search "research." Both make use of the word "search." Father Time has evidently sweetened my memory, because the photos I saw were pretty horrific. Most of you have done this assignment -- you know how it goes. Slice open the frog's belly, and spent the rest of class pinning its skin outward and playing "Operation" with whatever was inside. By the time we were through, the frogs looked like something out of Hellraiser.
That's why I've placed a picture of a perfectly living poison dart frog up above. I was going to show a frog in the midst of being dissected, but I couldn't find a single image that seemed okay to surprise everyone with. Even the pre-dissection dead frog images seemed too grim. So, you get a poison dart frog. You know, the kind they always base rubber squirt frogs on?
I wouldn't say that we didn't learn anything, but most worthwhile tidbits tend to get lost when a bunch of seventh graders are handed dead animals to play with.
Only during the Halloween season could such an activity be transformed into candy.
From Target's Edgar & Ellen collection, it's the Mad Lab Frog Dissection Kit! An enormous gummy frog with which we can recreate the most gore-filled moment of grade school!
I haven't been writing about Target's spooky goods as much as I did in previous years, but they're still rockin' the Hallo stylings with some of the best looking and most top quality items a would-be haunter could hope for.
While I find myself more appreciative of the gritty, low rent decorations one might see hanging on the walls of the local library during their late October "Pages & Pizza" party, the stuff Target's carrying is undeniably awesome. They've really helped Halloween become one of those "holidays you decorate for," in ways that go well beyond mere pumpkins and cotton webs. The quality of the stuff is just as good as the Christmas junk you'd find at a Macy's store in December, and anytime we can seat a bloody goblin at the table next to Santa, it's cause for celebration.
Even their candy is top drawer. You're not going to find a foot-sized gummy frog in any other department store, much less one that comes with dissection tools.
I'm trying not to spew hyperbole, but I really do believe that this is the largest single piece of gummy candy I've ever owned. "Foot-sized" was an exaggeration, but it's as long as your hand, and probably just as heavy. The frog's creators opted to make it cute rather than sprawled out and dead, and though this hurts the realism a bit, it at least makes the concept of dissecting frogs and eating them a little more palatable.
The set includes a plastic butter knife and tweezers. The tweezers are functional, but the knife is more just for show. I tried to slice a leg off, and it just wasn't happening. As is the case with most gummy candies, teeth are the best knives. Plus, there's something almost cathartic about shredding a foot-sized hand-sized gummy frog into pieces using only what God gave me.
As for the flavor, it's just okay. Not very sweet and lacking any sort of punch, I kind of felt like I was chewing on an eraser until I got to the slightly softer core of the frog meat. Fortunately for Target, I elect to chew erasers voluntarily, and with great frequency.
By now you may have noticed that the giant gummy frog seems to have a darker midsection. There's no reward in store for your observance, but you were correct to be suspicious. When you slice open a frog, there's got to be something inside. Contrary to some theories, frogs are not hollow. Target's people didn't feel comfortable stuffing him with an assortment of gummy organs and intestines, so we got the perennial next-best-thing: Gummy flies!
The flies aren't very well defined and I can't honestly claim that they look like flies, but Edgar (or perhaps Ellen) tried to compensate for this by providing them in several colors. If nothing else, they help justify the inclusion of the tweezers, which had me totally scratching my head until I realized that they were the perfect tool for use in picking up gummy flies.
Despite its macabre concepts, the Edgar & Ellen candy collection tries to maintain some sense of class. In dirtier hands, it's fun to imagine what a gummy frog dissection kit might consist of. Sugary, gooey blood injected into the limbs? Kidneys lined with marzipan? The sky's the limit.
As for dissecting real frogs, there are a number of kits available that will let you do just that. Most of them have pictures of smiling six-year-olds on the boxes, just to make everything that much weirder. I'm having trouble coming up with an opinion on the whole "right or wrong" issue, as I find it's better to live life without too many convictions firmed up in writing. For what it's worth, I think I'd have just as much fun cutting up another owl pellet.
