jr conlin's ink stained banana

Do you have kids?

Do you plan on giving them gifts this Yule?

Then you need a Daddy kit.

What, pray tell, is a Daddy kit? It's the stuff Daddy needs to free the contents of the gift once your precious little spawn tears the paper off the box. The good news is that a quick trip to the the local hardware store gets you all of this for precious little of your few, remaining dollars.

(Note, while i'm calling this a Daddy Kit, obviously Mommies can greatly benefit as well, although most of the Mom's i know already have these so it's like telling them "be sure to buy bread at bakeries".)

The Daddy Kit consists of:

1. 6" diagonal cutters – Absolutely THE tool of choice when it comes to extricating toys from packaging. If you can see the tie, this bugger'll cut it. $6 of sanity, right there.
2. multibit screwdriver – Just make sure that you've got one that's not only multi-bit, but has all the bits somewhere you don't have to dig for them, and can do small screws. What, you think everything's got a slide off battery cover? Heh, yeah, you keep thinking that.
3. Cheap Ass Box Cutter – Do NOT go for "manly" here. You just need to cut through about a 1/8th inch max of corrugated cardboard/ 1/32nd of impossible to cut plastic. A longer blade is not going to help, and may wind introducing li'l Suzy to French History if you're not careful.

Optional Gear

4. 2foot square of 1/8th inch scrap wood. – You're going to want something to cut on that isn't furniture, flooring or flesh. 2 feet gives you good room to work without spousal disapproval
5. Tool belt – Because you're going to want to keep this crap out of curious little hands.
6. A universal off switch for when the batteries… just… won't… die.

There, you've got around 24 hours or so to go hit the hardware store and load up.