"Merry Christmas!"
The picture shows a real tarantula, but trust me—Hammacheer Schlemmer’s remote-controlled version will work just as well for frightening the arachnaphobic senior in in your family into cardiac arrest on Christmas morning…from up to twenty-five feet away!
The delightful toy “scurries back and forth across flat surfaces” just like the real thing, and there is even a special feature that allows the operator to make the eight hairy legs “twitch,” for that extra dose of terrifying realism. It’s a bargain, at just under $30.
Of course, as the National Sick Toy Association always reminds us, “Remote-controlled tarantula’s don’t scare people to death; people with remote-controlled tarantulas scare people to death.” Here’s an irony: If somebody would want such a thing, you know it would be unethical to give him one.
Try as I might, I can’t think of anything good that could come from a remote-controlled tarantula. It makes me nervous just knowing such a thing exists.
Coming soon from Hammacher Schlemmer: the remote-controlled urban rat and the life-sized dancing Bristol Palin android!
Ethics Alarms 
It’s better than the real thing.
No, you don’t have to buy batteries for the real thing, which will eat all the crickets in your house.
Next you’re gonna tell me the ice cube with the fly in it is unethical, or the cod-flavored candy, or the gum that snaps you with a tiny weak mousetrap!
If you tell me there’s a lot of Fly-o-phobia out there, perhaps. I LIKE cod flavored candy.
My biology students would love it! I would get them this instead of a real tarantula because they can’t dissect this one.
Actually, as the son of someone who was an amateur film maker in college, this would actually be a pretty useful prop.
I’ll grant you that. As a stage director, I actually thought the same thing. (Right now I need a trained house cat…a mechanical one would be a great improvement.)
If you have an elderly relative who’s starting to “totter”, you know you’re in his will and you’re a little short of funds these days (aren’t we all!) then what better way to greet him when he comes over for Christmas? Heck, the kids need to understand the reality of death anyway. So when Great Uncle Leo sees Timmy Tarantula, screams and croaks on the sofa, multiple purposes will be served. And the kids will get better presents next Xmas from Unc’s largesse. You can’t let ethics get in the way of practical problem solving, Jack!
Since I just had to put my Mom in the hospital for repeated falls, you have now made me a suspect if anything happens to her over Christmas. And now I have to find a new present for her…
How many times, in states yet unborn, will this scene be repeated? Or something to that effect… by Shakespeare in “Julius Caesar”. Let’s face it; where big money is involved, all sense of ethics can vanish into the misty heather. Family is no object!
By the way, my very best to your Mom… and a Merry Christmas to you both.