Bwog correspondent Alex Weinberg couldn’t pass up another 99 cent store, which called to him “like sirens beckoning Greek sailors towards the rocks.” Here are the wonders he encountered:

– A toy CD player with 4 discs included. The discs don’t spin, but they still manage to contain about 40 children’s songs each, most of them Christmas carols. When I pressed a button on the CD player, it began issuing an intermittent metallic groaning. Imagine a robot with heavy asthma. The off button did nothing to stop the noise and people were starting to give me looks, so I left the store in shame.

– Some plastic tea cups with a note saying, “Welcome to Degustation / That’s Great!!!”

– A large metal hoop draped with plastic chains. The chains are lined with clothespins, and they end with a startling metal hook. No explanation is provided.

– A squirt gun labeled “HHO Dream.” I’ve never been good at chemistry, so I’m not certain if “HHO” is a technically correct way of writing H2O. However, I do know that it’s a bad idea to inscribe “I have a dream. . . ” on a plastic water pistol, especially when it’s being sold in a dollar store on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

– Rubber balloons with the ominous warning, “Wash before inflate.”

– The Freedom Freshener! Finally, we can salute Old Glory in air freshener form, the way God always intended. It didn’t say what kind of smell it produced, but my money is on “flag.” Also, the package proclaims that all proceeds from the sale of Freedom Fresheners go towards “disaster relief.” I assume that disaster is September 11th, so it seems like they were a little late. (Oh, and you guessed it: The Freedom Fresheners were made in China, probably by prison labor. David Cross was right.)

– If you feeling weren’t patriotic enough, right next to the Freedom Freshener was a Kyle Petty NASCAR air freshener. All proceeds go toward Kyle Petty.

– Very sturdy looking handcuffs. The S&M implications would be obvious even if they weren’t bright red and titled “Valentine Love Cuffs.”

– DVDs, and lots of them. The one that I found for my collection was a double feature. One side of the box advertises “Abduction,” the tag line for which is, “Kidnapped and held for ransom can force you to make some unlikely choices.” The headline actor is “Leif Erickson,” the Viking who famously traveled a thousand years into the future to make 1970s rape thrillers. The other side features a movie called “Embryo: From embryo to woman in four and a half weeks.” If the box art is any indication, the main stars are Rock Hudson and a giant CGI fetus.

– The absolute highlight was a toy set from the movie Superman Returns (or, as they apparently call it in China, “Superman Come Back”). The package includes four Supermen, each one with notably different color schemes and physical builds. Going left to right, the first Superman possesses a Kung-Fu grip button that does nothing. The next has a positively impressive set of jowls and Steve Carrell’s face. The third Superman, possibly overcompensating for his lack of a cape, is riding a purple robotic velociraptor which emits lazer noises from its mouth. I currently have this monstrosity sitting on my desk,  and if this place burns down tomorrow, it will be the only thing I’ll bother to save.

– The last Superman has Elvish written on his sleeves, making me think that they just repainted the upper body of a Legolas figurine. That’s awesome enough as it is, but it also gives me hope that somewhere out there is an equally ludicrous Lord of the Rings playset waiting to be discovered. Maybe there are four Legolases, one of whom rides a hang glider and blasts “Suffragette City” from his jambox when you press a button. He also has swords for hands.