Have yourself a wary Christmas - Christmas gifts

Nation's Business, Dec, 1987 by Nancy L. Croft

Have Yourself A Wary Christmas

Dreaming Of A Brown Christmas

Among the revelers decking their halls with boughs is David Lawrence, who has forgone holly for potted, dead shrubs.

His 8-month-old company, Everybrown, Inc., started when Lawrence got tired of customers telling him that the plant in his Baltimore gas station's window was dead.

"Finally I said, 'No it's not, it's an Everbrown,' and I'd go off into a long, involved story about this special plant," says Lawrence.

The Everbrown (Extremus Maximus Deadus) comes with a book describing product's many virtues, among them, "it stays seven inches tall forever" and is "completely maintenance-free." Lawrence touts his product as the "Pet Rock of the '80s," the perfect companion--needs no water, air, sun, food, fertilizer, transplanting or special environment.

Just introduced, the Everbrown should be hitting novelty stores on the West Coast--where Lawrence has a distributor--in time for Christmas.

"Lawrence even offers a guarantee: "The Everbrown is guaranteed not to grow," he says. "But if, for any reason, it does start to grow, you can send it back for a new one."

Games People Play

Is meeting deadlines before the holiday causing you stress? A new board game called Stress Attack may help you cope with pencil-breaking, ulcer-making situations.

The game was created by Stressbusters, a Massachusetts seminar company run by Craig B. Mardus, a stress consultant and lecturer.

The purpose of the game, says Mardus, is to learn stress-reduction techniques while having fun.

Players role a die and land on squares that tell them to select a card from one of four categories of stress: childhood, school, job and love-life. Each card describes a stressful situation.

A card from the job-stress category says, for example: "While on a business flight back from the worst disaster of your sales career, you get an inflight phone message that you are fired. You find out upon landing that the airline has lost your luggage."

When the stressful situation is determined, a player then draws from another stack of cards that specify one of several stress-reduction techniques. The player must relate that particular technique to the situation described in the first card.

If the other players are not convinced that the approach would be successful, the player loses a turn. The player who gets around the board first wins. But there are tricks and curve balls to make getting through the game a stressful challenge.

Mardus says Stress Attack can be used therapeutically in corporate stress-reduction seminars, nursing homes, schools and even at home. Stress Attack is available only by mail from Stressbusters, Stratton Road, Williamstown, Mass. 01267.

For people who love charades and Trivial Pursuit, Rob Angel of Seattle, Wash., has created a fast-paced guessing game called Pictionary.

In just over one year, Angel says, more than 3 million Pictionary games have been sold, and it is now the No. 1-selling board game in the country.

The object of the game is to move around the board by identifying words from hurriedly drawn sketches.

The words are on cards in a stack. A player takes a card and must then draw a picture that will convey that word to a partner without the use of letters, numbers or other words. If the partner guesses the word within one minute, the team advances on the board.

The idea for Pictionary developed shortly after Angel graduated from Western Washington University in 1981. He made up the game to play at parties. He would ask friends to sketch a word selected from the dictionary. Onlookers would try to be first to guess the word.

The success of Pictionary, which is designed for ages 12 to adult, has prompted Angel to design a scaled-down version called Pictionary Junior for children ages 7 to 11.

Grin And Bear It

Looking for a gift for the CEO who has everything? How about a Bearman of the Board teddy bear? He's one of a long line of alternative teddy bears created by the North American Bear Company, Inc., in Chicago.

Other costumed V.I.B.'s (Very Important Bears) include Bearilyn Monroe, Humphrey Beargart, Lauren Bearcall and Scarlett O'Beara.

The company was founded in 1978 by Barbara Isenberg and her brother Paul Levy (both natives of Chicago) after a stuffed bear that Isenberg made out of an old sweatshirt received much attention from adult friends. The company has since sold more than 3 million bears worldwide through 10,000 retail outlets, at prices up to $108.

Two other lines, V.I.M.'s (Very Important Monsters) and V.O.P.'s (Very Outrageous Pets), feature such furry bear mutations as Count Bearacula (a V.I.M.) and Collie Parton (a V.O.P.).