A friend was recently cleaning out his
room when he found some greeting cards he'd bought 10 years
ago and forgotten all about. Knowing my taste for all things
obscure and silly, he handed them over to me. At first glance,
they seemed fairly normal Disney cards, with a set up on the
front and a "cute" punch line inside. Upon closer
inspection, however, it became clear that these could not
be original Disney products... these were "fakes"
of the kind so widely found all over India. Really, this country
rips stuff off all the time and doesn't think twice about
it.
They'd
done quite a good job of making it look authentic... They'd
lifted actual pictures of Disney characters (as opposed to the
crudely drawn Mickey Mouses you'd see on children's schoolbags)
and there was even a ©DISNEY at the back, to fool the more
discerning. Completely unnecessary, because anyone with a half
a brain would figure out that this was shady shit. Why? Because
of the goddamn content on these cards. The plagiarisers
(bless them) probably thought that the jokes were "cute"
or something. They're not. They sound like the kind of pick
up lines you'd expect to hear at sleazy bars, or in a list that
reads "bad pick up lines that will get you slapped
and never ever get you laid". Printing
cards with wordings like this - not as a joke but in an earnest
attempt to create "fun, romantic cards" - would be
humourous in itself, but when the creators steal the likenesses
of those squeaky clean, wholesome Disney characters, they deserve
to be shared with the world. Let's see them!
 
I decided to show you this
card first, because it's the tamest of the three. The message
is fairly simple: Do you believe in love at first sight
or do I've to walk by again. The contraction of "I
have" to "I've" in a completely inappropriate
place adds just the right amount of shitty English for this
card to be added to one's permanent collection.
 
Whoa!
Now entering sleaze zone. Lemme get this right... we're
supposed to be checking out Minnie Mouse's body? Suddenly, my
happy childhood memories of watching Disney Hour seem...
violated. How are we supposed to ever look at Minnie the same
way again, now that I've seen her posing like a Playmate for
this picture? What's that white thing under her dress... are
those her panties?? My god, what am I thinking... shoot
me now! If the people responsible for making this card
are reading this, I hope you're happy. I hope the blood money
you made from selling this shit can help you drown out the knowledge
that in the minds of children, a perfectly innocent drawing
of a cartoon character is now forever associated with sluttiness.
But
even that is nothing compared to the card you're about to see.
Take a deep breath, and look:
 
Is
your father a terrorist? 'Coz you're the bomb. I really
wanna know... does crap like this actually work? Are there women
out there who actually find lines like this amusing? Because
I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to recieve this card. And
if that wasn't enough, the girl who gets this card has to put
up with the picture of Minnie Mouse from the 1940s, just to
remind her just how much of a bomb she is.
These
cards are at least 10 years old, and I wonder whether they still
make rip-off items like this, what with India's subsequent globalisation
and liberalisation and blah blah blah. Actually I'm quite sure
they'd still be making them. No one gives a shit.
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