Airdate: Monday, December 11, 2006
Sender: Talon Jendro, Des Moines IA
Strong Bad: (to the tune of Keyboard Strong Bad's rendition of "Jingle Bells" from "Decemberween in July") Ding ding dong, ding ding dong, ding ding Dear Strong Bad!
Talon Jendro ("Where'd you get that name, George Lucas? Ta'lon J'en-dr'o from the computery-generated planet of Des' Moi-nes'ia") wants to know what Strong Bad wants for Decemberween. Strong Bad remarks that the sort of things he wants should be obvious ("A catapult that launches balls of cobras, a chainsaw car, a subscription to EGM2, a hot step-sister..."), so it's more important to establish what he doesn't want for Decemberween.
Strong Bad (and Marzipan, of all people) proceed to go into a parody of a home shopping network as they list off a series of undesirable Decemberween presents, including:
- Ornaments, especially the tacky and/or quickly dated kind ("There's nothing like opening a gift just in time to put it in a box in the attic for a year. And next Decemberween when you get it back out, guess what? It's still just a cool snowman surfing the internet.")
- Motion-activated mechanical dancing "no-bots" which play some garbled pop song "in glorious drive-thru stereo" that tends to be drowned out anyway by their noisy internal mechanisms "clanking together in an effort to barely bust some sort of move".
- Home-made gifts, such as sea-shells with "office supplies glued to them for no reason", and clothes-pin reindeer ornaments ("Home-made and an ornament! That thing is an anti-gift!")
Strong Bad: So Ta'lon, my young apprentice, there's my "Please Great Aunt Whoever, Don't Get Me This Stuff For Decemberween" list. I highly suggest you make your own. But if it doesn't work, don't forget to take advantage of all the temporary help that retailers hire this time of year. Those people will refund anything! Last year, I returned an omelette to a hardware store for nigh on fifty bucks. Well, Happy Decemberween everybloody!
(Strong Bad leaves, the Paper comes down.)
(Strong Bad leaves, the Paper comes down.)
Tropes:
- Abnormal Ammo: One of the things on Strong Bad's "want" list is "a catapult that launches balls of cobras".
- Abuse of Return Policy: Strong Bad encourages viewers to take advantage of seasonal retail workers who are too apathetic to properly enforce the store's return policy, claiming he got fifty dollars for returning an omelette to a hardware store.
- Bait-and-Switch: The title of the email; although Strong Bad quickly rattles off some stuff the viewer would already know about that he'd want, the main focus of the email is about the opposite.
- Black Comedy Rape: Implied; Strong Sad's phone call is interrupted by what sounds like an amorous wildebeest attacking him.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Ornaments and home-made gifts are bad, but apparently home-made ornaments (like the "forgettably precious" clothes-pin reindeer) are the worst.Strong Bad: That thing is an anti-gift! If someone gives you one of those, you actually have to pay them because it's so poor. Uh, probably because they're so poor.
- Calculator Spelling: A homemade Decemberween gift consists of a seashell with office supplies glued to it, including a calculator with "040404" (which looks like "HOHOHO" when turned upside-down) displayed.
- Continuity Nod: The Strong Bad no-bot dances to Strong Bad's song "Everybody to the Limit".
- Convenience Store Gift Shopping: According to Marzipan, dancing holiday no-bots "just scream 'I stopped at the drug store on my way over.'"
- Crappy Homemade Gift: Among the "veritable cornucoppuri" of bad gifts are home-made junk like seashells with office supplies hot-glued to them and a googly-eyed clothespin reindeer ornament named "Klibber". Strong Bad calls the latter an "anti-gift" because it's both home-made and an ornament.
- Distracted by My Own Sexy: Strong Bad is briefly "entrangled" by the "hypnotically-swaying hips" of his no-bot counterpart.
- Flirty Stepsiblings: Apparently Strong Bad hopes this will happen with him, since one thing on his list of things he wants for Decemberween is a "hot step-sister".
- My New Gift Is Lame: The whole conceit of this e-mail is listing stock bad gift ideas, like ornaments and badly-made handicrafts.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Strong Sad calls Strong Bad's shopping show to complain about him putting "wildebeest pheromones in my laundry again".
- Punctuation Shaker: Strong Bad reads the sender's name as "Ta'lon J'en-dr'o from the computery generated planet of Des' Moi-nes'ia."
(Cut to a Dancin' Musical Nobot of Homestar sitting on Strong Bad's computer table. It starts dancing to a terribly distorted version of the Intro page music)
Dancin' Homestar Musical Nobot: Everybody! Everybody! Everybody! Everybody!
Dancin' Homestar Musical Nobot: Everybody! Everybody! Everybody! Everybody!
