You’re sitting at your desk on another one of this century’s “longest and more boring conference calls” when you glance over at the new toy next to your phone and instantly feel better about the time you’re wasting.

Dado’s Building Cubes may be designed “for ages 3 and up,” but I think the best use for these colorful interlocking cubes is for you to see how awkwardly you can construct a standing structure before it collapses under its own unwieldiness. Why not get two sets and double the number of available blocks to 20? They’re cheap!

$28.00 at MoMA Store

Commuting isn’t any fun, and lately, travel is even less so. You board your plane or train and then you sit there trying to find something interesting in the local paper or resort to propping open your laptop in the tiny space assigned to you and attempt to do something useful.

Make your travel more fun and increase your mind capacity with the Jack Spade Travel Scrabble. The stylish little packet comes in chocolate canvas and holds its own Scrabble board. You get a cloth bag for the letter tiles and a handy interior pocket for the score pad and pencil.

$95.00 at BlueBee

I am a casual gamer, at best. Usually. I spend a few hours a month on a game and come back now and again when there’s nothing on the TiVo and no DVDs I want to see. Usually. I don’t get all excited about new releases and don’t see the big draw of spending hours a night conquering the foes and beasts with button smashes and trigger pulls.

Usually.

“Crackdown” for the Xbox 360 has taken away hours of sleep and kept my sweaty hands on that bloody wireless controller until the batteries are dead. The game itself is simple, it’s a riff on the Grand Theft Auto sandbox approach where your character can wander a landscape freely and do pretty much whatever he wants to. The twist here is that your character is a super-human Agent who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, pile cars into pillow forts and shoot rockets into crowds of enemies and watch their burning bodies fly hundreds of feet into the air.

I know, it sounds kind of silly. But the silliness is exactly what’s great about it. The creators took the best parts of GTA (freedom, mayhem, crashes and an open environment) and threw away the distractions (plot, basically) distilling the game to the essence of fun. I’ll sleep when I’m dead… and I die a lot.

$59.00 at Amazon

When I was a kid, I went into the mountains to stay with my friend Brian and his family at their cabin. I had never stayed overnight in the mountains, so I had no idea how clear the sky could be and how many stars were visible when you remove the pollution (air- and light-) from your view.

Kids today, do they even care about the stars? We’re not landing on the moon or shooting for planet colonization anymore, so who would really want the HomeStar Pro Home Planetarium?

You! You want it! Because it features high brightness white LEDs that will rotate the planets in slow motion on your own ceiling and will even show shooting stars. Image this light show the next time you’re high and listening to Floyd.

$349.00 at AudioCubes.com

There’s always someone on your gift list - maybe it’s that woman two desks over who always remembers to bring enough donuts for everyone, and you have trouble remembering to hold the door open for her - for whom you have no idea what to get. For. Something.

Anyway, no matter whose stocking you’re stuffing, I’ll wager they’d appreciate all the time and trouble you went to in order to procure for them this 7 ½” tall “authentic” Easter Island bobble head. Because there’s nothing more fun than a little head on Xmas morning!

$16.95 at What on Earth

It’s been a while since any vinyl figure got me interested in pulling out my wallet since the heyday of Michael Lau and his extraordinary and groundbreaking pieces of plastic art sailed in from Hong Kong. It takes an artist with a special eye to make a collectible piece that’s more than just another slab of petroleum-based flotsum.

You may think Gary Baseman can only do one thing, but luckily for us he does it very well. His new line of Dunces for Critterbox are out, and each is limited to 500 pieces. Grab one (or the whole set) before they’re gone for good.

$80 at Giant Robot Store

When I was a kid, I collected Matchbox cars. This was before they turned into Hot Wheels. Matchbox cars had thick axels and little rubber tires and doors that really open! Then I graduated up to Korgi Cars, which were bigger and more for show than for taking to the dirt field behind the house and creating demolition derbies.

I’ve always loved model cars, and now Patrick Calello has created Automoblox for the kid in all us designers. The solid wooden bodies can be taken apart and reassembled to create new vehicles, and the real rubber tires and classy rims will make all your desk buddies envious. Plans are afoot to make expansion parts (chrome rims! extension blocks for that stretch pick-up limo of your dreams!) available soon.

$35.00 each at UnicaHome

When the county fair is in full-tilt, everyone likes a stroll through the midway to see whether the old games we playedgot suckered in by as kids are still there, unchanged and sucking in a whole new generation of idiots.

If you’ve ever thrown a baseball at a fuzzy-crowned doll, you’ll recognize the Circus Punks immediately. Handmade in limited editions out of beautiful Fresno, California, these 6-inch dolls are gorgeous by anyone’s standards. Each one is also signed and numbered by the artists who finished them for you, and the designs range from the elaborate pinball machine-inspired Sin Kitty (shown) to the aboriginal Chump, the cartoon African death mask visage of Bad Ass Baboon, to the endearing and loveable Grenade Bunny, all in purple and as deranged as any other county fair freak.

$11.99 at My Plastic Heart.

While we’re on the subject of photography, let’s travel to the other end of the expense spectrum and see what can be had for $20 and a little cutting, folding and ingenuity.

If you’re not familiar with the art of pinhole photography, the idea is really simple-simple. You take some regular 35mm film, stick it inside a dark box and expose it through a pinhole so that it records exactly what it sees — more or less. It’s about the surprising and artful results rather than real-world accuracy.

And this pinhole camera even looks like a camera, even though it has no moving parts and is made out of paper. It’s a Looner Goupe Hole-onEx, for those label whores who need to tout what it is they’re whipping out at the next orgy.

$20.00 at fredflare.com.

If you’ve been putting off buying a new Canon SLR digital camera and/or upgrading your Canon SLR lens collection, now’s the time. Dell is currently offering all Canon cameras at 10% off at their accessories site, and even bigger discounts on all Canon lenses.

To make this offer even more tasty, Canon has a rebate offer going on until the end of the year. Buy one product, get a rebate. Buy two (say, a new camera and an extra lens, or two new lenses) and both items get a rebate and the rebate amount on both items doubles. Go nuts on your credit card and purchase three qualifying products, get a rebate on all three items plus the rebate amount of each item is tripled.

Whether it’s time to buy yourself a nifty new grown-up toy, or you’re thinking about someone else’s (extraordinarily generous) Christmas gift, here’s your chance.

Various prices at Dell Electronics & Accessories, plus rebate form at Canon USA.

If Arnold can have an action figure, and W has two, shouldn’t we also celebrate great people who actually accomplished something worthwhile? Do we really want our kids fantasizing that they’re the President of the United States in military fatigues declaring Mission Accomplished on board an aircraft carrier, or would we rather think that they’d love to play-act drinking themselves to death in Baltimore after penning some of the bleakest literature in American culture?

Me, I tend toward the latter. So here we have the Edgar Allen Poe Action Figure! He comes with his own raven to lament the lost Lenore, he’s dressed in his funereal best and looks ready to fall into the next gutter. Pit him against your favorite Master of the Universe and have them duke it out for literary supremacy! Poe vs. Skelator! Live, on Pay-Per-View!

$10.00 at fredflare.com.

I am often jealous of women. This generally occurs when I am window shopping and pass a shoe store or see a bag or purse that I love but I know I cannot have. Men’s things are generally quite boring and unimaginitive by comparison and while we get stuck with the same designs with tiny variations year after year, women’s styles can change dramatically and have a fashion flair we men are supposed to be scared of.

Giant Bicycles, for example, has a line of bikes they call Fashion — and they’re all for women. Areva, shown here, is a 7-speed beauty in “Radiant Blue” with a wicker basket on the handlebars to carry home your fresh flowers, a kickstand to hold up your wonderful cycle, a bell and mirrors so they know you’re coming and you can watch their looks of envy as you pass.

And if you think Areva is sexy, check out Vida… she has flower-shaped pedals!

$380.00 at Giant Bikes or a dealer near you.

Urban vinyl is so last year, kids. The next big wave is wood, take my word for it. Killing trees for our amusement and service is a human necessity, and the good folks at Friends With You are starting up the chainsaws and putting out their first five Good Wood Gang members.

This is Sweet Tooth, a modular wood toy for you to break down and rebuild again and again. And again. Like all Friends With You figures, Sweet Tooth is made by hand and worth setting up on a shelf as your own art when you’re not playing with his pieces.

$30.00 at Rotofugi.

Every day it’s the same thing. There you sit in your little office space staring at the same damned things. That damned stapler. That damned plant. That damned computer monitor. Wouldn’t you love to put someone else in your personal hell?

And now you can! And still stay right there yourself so that all-important paycheck never stops appearing. THe Office Fish Tank is a little bit of colorful whimsey for your desk, wherein you can place a couple of those hard-to-kill goldfish and watch them try to find their own way out of hell, without actually jumping free and committing suicide. One hopes.

$24.00 at fredflare.com.

Is it an imperative that every child has a Radio Flyer red wagon growing up? I know I had one, or at least I remember having one… or riding in one… or something. It’s iconic and expected and, to me, more fun as an idea than a reality.

Maybe Radio Flyer agrees with me, because in addition to that wagon the company also makes this much more keen and really smooth and groovy looking Car #8. It has an all-steel body, hopefully with a sharp edge or two to teach little hands a valuable lesson about life, real rubber tires and a working steering wheel with a honking horn to annoy your neighbors! Whee!

$89.00 at Land of Nod.

Children don’t get enough art crammed down their throats like I had when I was in school. My, my, my, many’s the day I went home covered in Tempra paint, smelling of flour paste and Crayola wax. And what are they doing today? Numbed by watching flashing colors on the TV as fat, dumb, bouncing characters mumble nonsense at them.

Cease this horror immediately and introduce the wonder and beauty of color — as well as the occasion to really mess up all your (or your friends’ with children) furniture and household. This Super Art Set comes in an aluminum case (wall dents!) and is outfitted with 12 watercolor paints with palette, 24 colored pencils, 24 oil pastels, 24 crayons, 36 markers, a paintbrush, pencil, scissors, pencil sharpener, mini stapler, eraser, paper clips, ruler, and clear and white glue.

Hell, even I want it!

$42.00 at MoMA Online Store.

So, you’re bored at work. Really bored? Really, really bored? Extremely bored? So bored that you’re reading shopping blogs online to relieve your boredom — now that, my friend, is bored. And who would I be if I could not offer suggestions for you?

“Dumb Dares for the Workplace” is an awful, horrible, hideous, fabulous game. You get a stack of cards. On the cards are printed 250 dares. These are things like “fake a loud orgasm in the bathroom,” “put up a ‘missing’ poster for your stapler making sure you include its name and age for identification purposes,” and “lie underneath your desk and snore loudly.” As if you don’t already do that. You turn on the Diabolical Dare Selector and it tells you which of the dares on the card — including the dreaded Extremely Dumb Dare — you must perform.

$15.00 at Wishing Fish.

Disclosure: I don’t own this, but I want to own one to have it on my desk and to look at it and pick him up and stare into his evil, potatoey, googley eyes and pretend that he is telling me that I don’t know the powwaaahh of the darrrk side!

It’s Mr. Potato Head Darth Tater, of course, as if you didn’t know. What I really want to do is take off the darth parts and put them on a real potato, and then put the potato in water until it gets all hair and then act out the death scene…

Anakin: “Luke help me take this mask off.”
Luke: “But you’ll die.”
Darth Vader: “Nothing can stop that now. Just for once let me look on you with my own eyes.”

Get it? Potato? Eyes? I kill me.

$8.99 at Amazon

Don’t tell me you’re not TiVoing [adult swim] on Cartoon Network, because if you tell me that I’ll know that you are either a liar or someone who is so out of the Cool Loop that you’ve never even owned a pair of Chuck hi-tops.

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is genius, like so many of the after hours animations are during [adult swim]. But I have a special place in my heart for Harvey, Peanut and The Bear.

And that place was carpeted wall-to-wall and gold-plated after viewing the “Back to the Present” episode, wherein the Jetsons are struck lame and dying after they cannot figure out how to traverse Harvey’s carpet since it doesn’t move like an automatic sidewalk. Plus: dead Astro.

$20.99 at Amazon.

Everyone can use a little help now and again, whether your desk sits in a corner office on the 43rd floor or tucked into a corner next to your bed where the phone can reach.

The Lego Desk Assistant (available as “Lady” or “Pal”) will smile reassuringly at you all day, every day, helping to put the ‘toy’ in your daily toil. Either 7½” high assitant comes with pencil sharpener, paper clips, tape dispenser, stapler, pen, pencil and all the commitment a snap-together plastic heart can muster.

$12.00 at fredflare.com.

Look! It’s a squeezable, adorable, deadly Wee Ninja! At only 7” tall, and lacking the requisite nunchuks, he’s probably not as deadly as most other ninja, but I’m not sure I’d turn my back on his unblinking gaze nevertheless.

Wee Ninja is handmade by Shawn Smith for his line of Shawnimals. Keep him in your bag in case someone comes sneaking after your iPod, but remember to take him out at night or who knows what sort of mischief he’ll get up to.

$19.99 at My Plastic Heart

As many of you know — and the rest of you should — “Family Guy” returns with new episodes on Fox starting May 1st. Don’t you think you’ll need some company around you to watch the new season before they pull the plug again?

Action Figure might be a slight misnomer to describe Peter Griffin and his family (with the exception of Lois, perhaps) but how can you resist buying Series 2 and 3 of the line of Family Guy dolls, including Streetwalking Peter, Mayor West, Quagmire, Mutant Stewie, Death and, of course, The Pope. Pre-order now before they’re all gone!

$10.99 each from Corner Store Comics

I’ll admit right up front that I am not a video game player, let alone addict. I don’t really keep up with what’s happening in the gamesphere and am only peripherally interested in thumb twiddling in general, but I must tell you, while I have your attention, that if you have access to a PlayStation2, you positively need Burnout3: Takedown.

Why? Well, you know how you become frustrated playing the driving games because you don’t have the greatest dexterity with the controller and can never quite remember which button does what. And steering? Please. If you’re like me, you crash more than you ought to.

The beauty of Burnout3 is that you’re supposed to crash! The bigger your conflagration and the more other vehicles you manage to destroy, the bigger your reward. And if you’ve ever needed the satisfaction of driving others off the road and watching them sail into the air and explode — this is the game for you.

$39.95 at Amazon

From our friends at KidRobot comes the 8-inch pink “Hate Dunny,” just in time for Easter! If you’re not of a mind to be giving out snuggly little stuffed animals and foil-wrapped chocolate rabbits, perhaps this little pink wonder will fill the bill.

Smorkin’ Hate Dunny don’t take no shit, he just wants his ciggie butts and to be badass! He’s from Frank Kozik and his little pink ass is inscribed with HATE just in case someone doesn’t quite get it from his Flintstone-like chin pubes.

$29.95 at Kidrobot

Cheburashka is a friend to Russian children everywhere… but mostly in Russia. He’s kind of like Gumby, only he isn’t made of clay and he can’t walk into any book with his pony pal Pokey.

Instead, Cheburashka and his friends Crocodile Genady and Old Lady Shapocliak (I promise I’m not making this up) “befriend all who are lost or lonely,” protect nature and build lots of playhouses. And stuff. Couldn’t you just hug him to death? And now you can!

$14.95 at Super 7 Store.