Too soon? Connecticut company can’t keep its Ebola plush toys in stock — but you can still buy a dengue-fever plushie
Posted on October 27, 2014 by Joy Tipping/Staff Writer
Don't you just want to go into cuddle mode with it immediately? This is the sold-out Giant Ebola plush toy. (IMAGE: GIANTmicrobes Inc.)
OK, we thought we’d seen and heard weird when it comes to Ebola, but this takes the deadly, virus-frosted cake: According to a story in Reuters by Barbara Goldberg, a Connecticut company called GIANTmicrobes Inc., which makes a line of plush toys based on viruses and other microscopic organisms, says it has completely sold out of its Ebola-toy stock. That includes the small Ebola doll for $9.95, the Gigantic Ebola (might as well go BIG) doll for $29.95 and an Ebola Petri Dish toy for $14.95, according to the company’s website.
As the Reuters story noted (I can’t top this), “It may be the only time you will find these words in the same sentence: “Ebola” and “Add to Wishlist.”
Reuters goes on: ” ‘Since its discovery in 1976, Ebola has become the T. Rex of microbes,’ says the Stamford, Connecticut-based maker of the ‘uniquely contagious toy’ on its website, which promotes them as gag gifts that also have educational value.
With the latest Ebola outbreak, which already killed more than 4,500 people, mostly in West Africa, customers have snapped up the toy, which looks like half a pretzel. The virus arrived recently in the U.S. recently, first in Dallas in a case in which the patient died and several health-care workers were infected.
The actual, extremely deadly Ebola virus (PHOTO: Centers for Disease Control)
“You do not want to get Ebola,” warns the GIANTmicrobes website. [Well, thank heavens they're not promoting it as a soft and cuddly virus ... although they sort of ARE.] “A short incubation period of 2 to 21 days presages symptoms which include fever, aches, sore throat, and weakness, followed by diarrhea, stomach pain, vomiting, and both internal and external bleeding. And then, for between 50-90 percent of victims, death.”
GIANTmicrobes lists the World Health Organization as one of its largest customers, along with pharmaceutical companies and the American Red Cross.
Anyone disappointed by the current shortage of the Ebola toys can click on “Add to Wishlist” and wait for more stock to arrive. Or make a different selection from the company’s array of other plush toys, including anthrax, botulism, cholera and dengue fever.
It was not clear how many of the toys have been sold and the company could not be reached for comment.”
Well, if you can’t get and Ebola doll for your precious child this holiday season, you can at least give them dengue fever. So thankfully (?), there’s that.
Dengue fever: Not NEARLY as cuddly as Ebola, is it? (IMAGE: GIANTmicrobes Inc.)
