“Here you go, Grandma! Here’s a fake robotic cat for you to pet. Your life is lonely, miserable and devoid of purpose.”
There are very few gifts you could purchase for someone that would be more depressing than a Companion Pet. Hasbro’s oddball invention is essentially a robotic cat that is intended to replace the companionship of a real cat, with its marketing material placing the elderly as their target demographic. So if you want to infantilize your grandparents more than you already do, then Hasbro have made just the thing.
The Companion Pet features built-in sensors that allow the robot cat to respond to motion and touch, along with “VibraPurr” sounds that mimic the noises made by a real cat. Except, y’know, it’s not actually a real cat, and if you purchase this for an elderly person they’d be well within their right to punch you in the mouth before informing you that they haven’t experienced decades of hardship just for you to hand them a fucking robot cat at the end of it.
I mean, just look at that box. Look at that elderly woman in her neon blue blazer, being patronized by her two shit-head grandchildren. She’s been actively involved in the raising of two generations of humans, and now those she has given life to have rewarded her by acknowledging that she’s lonely in the last portion of her life cycle, but rather than actively remedying this themselves, they’ve instead decided she’d be better off if she had a fake cat to stroke.
As if giving a pensioner one of these things wasn’t humiliating enough, we should also take into consideration that, despite Hasbro’s proclamation that they’re comparable with real cats, that quite clearly isn’t the case and they could only ever be mistaken for a real cat if given to someone who had somehow avoided any contact with a real cat throughout the duration of their lives. Consider this particular model, adopting a “draw me like one of your French girls” pose whilst waving its paw. I’m not cat expert, but even I know that this is not normal cat behavior.
If you wanted to remind a loved one that they are desperately alone, then Companion Pets can be purchased for $99.99 from Hasbro.com.
