Jingle Jugs
by Alissa Rowinsky
The phone was ringing when I arrived at work last Friday, and our internal caller ID flashed an unfamiliar name. For privacy's sake, let's call him Tom Smith.
"Um, Alissa?" Tom asked when I picked up the phone. He cleared his throat. "For some reason, my name is on your Jingle Jugs. Can I bring them over to you?"
A week and a half earlier, when I had impulsively responded to a spammy email offering me a free review pair of Jingle Jugs (allegedly, this year's "big" new novelty gift, heir to Billy the Bass and the Upside Down Christmas Tree), I had given the "Chief Jug Pusher & Publicist" my work rather than home address. He could be anyone, I thought. Better safe than sorry. The nightmarish scenario of my free Jugs being delivered to the wrong person at our company hadn't occurred to me.
Moments later, Tom arrived at my door carrying a large cardboard box. Somehow, a sticker bearing his name had become affixed to it and the mailroom had delivered it to his office. Not expecting a package, the unwitting Tom opened the box in front of several coworkers, revealing to their astonished amusement a mounted pair of rubber tits. Tom desperately tried to convince them that the Jingle Jugs weren't his, but his friends were skeptical — his name was right there — and began mercilessly hooting and teasing him. Tom was mortified ("I don't think I've ever turned so red"), and incredibly relieved when he found my name on the original mailing label, right below his.
Laughing far too loudly at his account of the mix-up, I attempted to explain that I didn't pay for the Jingle Jugs — I didn't order them for my own enjoyment or anything — I was going to review them. I am a writer, you see. But Tom didn't care. Clearly, all he wanted to do was get the hell away from the weird pervo in business affairs and begin his long journey to recovery. The open Jingle Jugs box lay on my desk between us for the duration of our torturous conversation, the jarringly lifelike and fully un-ignorable exposed areolae silently accentuating the situation. Humiliated, I slid my Jingle Jugs into a dark corner beneath my desk once Tom had left. I spent the rest of the day glaring at them, feeling sheepish and quietly attempting not to accidentally sexually harass anyone else.
Jingle Jugs consist of a large, plastic, faux-wood grained shield-shaped plaque, upon which is mounted a pair of perky Caucasian breasts. The jugs themselves are made of some sort of space age, flesh-like polymer, soft and somewhat yielding to the touch. (Yes, of course I felt them up.) A tiny red bikini top covers less than half of each jug, resulting in the aforementioned areola exposure. The nipples poke out prominently and are visible through the material, which is easily moved aside if you prefer your Jingle Jugs unfettered. There is no doubt that the nipples were designed with the utmost loving attention to detail. They look creepily authentic, down to their bumpy surfaces.
Beneath the breasts, the plaque houses a pair of internal speakers spanned by a decal reading "JingleJugs.com" in collegiate block lettering. Below this, in order, are a small sensor labeled "Motion Control," a small black button labeled "Try Me" and a volume control wheel. On the back of the unit are holes for wall mounting and insertion slots for the included easel legs you can use to display it on a flat surface. (One of the legs included with my Jugs was defective and wouldn't slide properly into place.) There is also a switch that allows you to turn your Jingle Jugs on and select between the "Try Me" or "Motion Sensor" modes.
When you choose the "Try Me" setting, and press the corresponding "Try Me" button on the front, the tinny strains of the "hit song" (as claims the box) "Titties and Beer" by Rodney Carrington (also known for "Morning Wood" and "Letter to My Penis") begin to issue from Speak & Spell-grade speakers. After a brief guitar intro, during which the jugs remain stationary, Rodney Carrington begins to sing something along the lines of:
Titties and beer
Titties and beer
I thank God almighty for titties and beer
Big titties and beer
Thank God I ain't queer
There's one thing daddy likes
And that's titties and beer
Big old titties and beer
Great big titties and beer.
As soon as the vocals begin, the breasts begin to rhythmically bounce and jiggle, first one, then the other, making a clearly audible — and for some reason hilarious — hydraulic thumping sound as they move. When you flip the switch to "Motion Control," the song starts playing and the tits start thumping and quivering whenever the sensor detects movement. In other words, at all times. You can't stop the Jingle Jugs once they've begun to sing the song — you have to just wait it out. When you use the motion control setting, it can be difficult to reach the unit fast enough to turn it off after the song ends, and it is likely to launch into another round of singing and bobbing and quivering and thump-thump-thumping before you can make it stop. This is a cycle that should be avoided at all costs, as prolonged repetition of the "Titties and Beer" song all but guarantees that it will get so firmly and unpleasantly stuck in your head that you will seriously consider self-trepanation.
Jingle Jugs are clearly designed with a certain jovial-fratty-good old boy-bar vibe (and target audience) in mind; but there is something undeniably serial killer-esque about a pair of tits mounted on a wooden plaque. The gaudy red lettering on the box that declares Jingle Jugs to be "The Trophy Rack You've Always Wanted!" seems like it should be followed by "...If You Used To Torture Animals As A Child!" Indeed, the more you look at these disembodied, hyper-sexualized breasts, all trussed up for display, the creepier and more sinister the whole apparatus appears. You can almost hear the grim, knowing resignation in Horatio Caine's voice as he spies this grisly trophy on the blood-spattered wall of some psychopath's fetid underground lair. "He's a collector" he'd say, squinting. "Mounted breasts are his signature. He's sending us a message." Or, more probably, "He got his bust" (removes sunglasses) "And now he... is gonna get busted." ("WAAAAAAHHHHH!" Roll opening credits.)
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But the JJs are far less chilling when activated. As soon as Mr. Carrington's tinny, twanging "hit" starts up and the jugs begin their mechanical, C3PO-like twitching and jerking, you realize that this thing is way more "Git-R-Done!" than "It puts the lotion in the basket." But that infernal song! With those cringe-tastic lyrics! In the approximately 30 seconds worth of song that plays, Mr. Carrington says "titties and beer" so many times that they stop sounding like words, thanks God twice (once for making him not "queer"), and, in the context of loving tits so much, refers to himself as "Daddy," which alone elevates the ickiness factor to heretofore unseen levels.
When they're turned off, and silent, Jingle Jugs are repulsive, macabre and uncanny, but when they're on, jiggling and braying, they're sexist, sleazy and annoying. It's a Catch-22, to be sure, but luckily, an entirely optional one, and of little-to-no consequence. A penny shy of fifty bucks seems like a fair enough price, but even though you know someone who would love them, they aren't worth it. Jingle Jugs are funny for about a minute, tops. Maybe five minutes if you have cats like mine who like to bat at the jugs as they move. But even the cats quickly tired of them. Perhaps (thank God) they are queer.
E-mail Alissa Rowinsky Wright at alissa at flakmag dot com.
