To commemorate the H1N1 virus that has swept across Mexico and has now popped up in different countries around the globe, a Mexican entrepreneur has created Achufy — a little, blue, oddly shaped plush doll with round, dark eyes. The man claims that it is a souvenir and that people can use it to help explain the 2009 viral outbreak to their future grandchildren. Apparently, encyclopedias don’t do the trick anymore. We need dolls to explain killer viruses to highly impressionable youngsters. The doll is going for 345 pesos which is equivalent to 30 U.S. dollars. I’m pretty sure you can get the actual virus for much cheaper and have a much more creative and harrowing story to tell the grandkids.

“Is this what the virus looked like grandpa? Was it this big with these big, black eyes? Did it talk?”

“It came out in my poop, boy. My poop! It ate your grandma’s heart medication and made a lot of long distance phone calls.”

They should tell Achufy how to get to Sesame Street. Let him wipe out all the other characters then run the place like Al Capone. Although, I’m sure Oscar the Grouch would be immune to him. There’s no telling what kind of diseases you pick up from living in a garbage can for forty years. A lotta used needles from the heroin heavy days of the seventies when Big Bird and Snuffy were deep into that shit. Bad times.

If this guy sells ONE of these dolls, he’s my hero.