Urban legend #623: The Expensive Cardboard Box. It goes something like this; a parent scans the ads, spots a great gift idea for their kid, scrimps and saves, shops and purchases, wraps and delivers the latest and greatest high-tech wizardry-wonderfulness that can bleep, bloop, pam, puh-zowie a bedazzling array of electronic chirps and rattles embedded into a piece of near indestructible plastic. And once it’s finally opened: the kid ends up playing with the box. Yup, the toy sits deserted collecting dust bunnies under the bed while the box is in the backyard where it serves as headquarters for aliens from the planet Zorbon. The cost of that moral: priceless. (more…)