LOS ANGELES — Aerosmith’s Tom Hamilton has expanded his career repertoire to include novelty mastermind with the advent of Obscenies, his line of Beanie Baby-like plush toys shaped like your favorite genitals.
“Each Obscenie is created using traditional, old world gene-splicing techniques. No chromosome has been spared in the effort to provide cute, cuddly, well-behaved characters,” Hamilton wrote in a letter. “Oh all right, they’re sewn together ... and stuffed ... in a sleepy little village in a faraway land ... okay ... a factory in China.”
The toys look like a synthesis of their brand tagline “Too Cute to Be Nasty” and their individual names, i.e. Coin Puss, Mrs. Kris Dingle, Mr. Happy — cuddly little naughty parts not much bigger than the palm of your hand.
The product description for Mr. Happy reads, "You can find him on any evening curled up in front of the fireplace with a good book, a glass of wine, a fine cigar and a supersized bottle of hand cream." The toy, available on Ebay, is a flesh-colored penis with a yellow happy face, boxer shorts and a tie.
The bassist says he’s surprised no one had jumped on the bandwagon before him.
“One day the idea for these little characters fell from who-knows-where with a huge crash,” he wrote. “I looked around and noticed that nobody saw or heard what was quite obvious to me. I couldn’t be the only one ... or could I? It was then that I knew that it was going to be my job to nurture this idea and birth it into reality.”
Hamilton hasn’t found a distributor yet and isn’t 100 percent of the commercial viability of Obscenies, but hopes people will hear about them and “sort of latch on to it.” So far he has produced about 8,000 of the toys in a Chinese factory.
Until the product catches on, Hamilton plans on putting the toys to good use: “I’m just going to take them out on the road and throw them out to people when I’m onstage,” he said.
