Sally Breslin: My Life: IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR WHEN TOYS ARE MADE TO LOOK MORE EXCITING THAN THEY REALLY ARE

This is the time of year when companies start plotting clever and devious ways in which to make their toys and games appear so irresistible to the general public, parents will stampede to the stores and risk getting trampled just to be the first to buy them for their kids for Christmas.

I have learned the hard way that TV commercials, and even the boxes that toys come in, rarely are as exciting as they make them appear to be.

I remember one particular experience about eight years ago that proves my point.

One of the things my husband and I used to enjoy at amusement parks when we were younger was the shooting gallery. Most of the galleries were set up like saloons, and all of the things in them, like the spittoons or the bottles lining the bar, had targets on them. Every time we’d shoot one of the targets, a sound effect like a “ping” or a “crrrr-aaack” would be heard, or objects would move or pop up. Even the player piano would start to play when we hit its target. And at the end of the game we’d receive a scorecard listing how many of the targets we’d actually hit.

My husband and I played those games so often, we began to feel like reincarnations of Annie Oakley and Wild Bill Hickock.

I hadn’t thought about the shooting galleries for a long time...that is, until I was in a department store one day and saw a target-shooting game on sale. The box it came in was huge and had colorful, artistic pictures of deer on it. I read the box and was pleased to discover it didn’t require a connection to an existing game-system of any kind. This game, according to the box, was completely self-contained inside two plastic rifles. Just aim them at the TV, it said, and the game would show up right on the screen.

On a whim, and thinking of all the fun my husband and I would have shooting at targets again (especially in the comfort of our own living room), I bought the game.

“Look what I bought!” I said to my husband the minute I got home. “It’s a target-shooting game! We can have competitions, just like the good old days!”

He took the box and studied it. “Looks pretty interesting,” he said. “There’s deer hunting, jug shooting, and even frog flipping.”

He opened the box and removed the two plastic guns – a bright green one and a bright orange one...in pieces that required some assembly. He then proceeded to assemble them. Soon, I heard a lot of muttering and grumbling.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Can’t get the rifle butt to fit on the green one,” he said. He banged it with the heel of his hand a few times and muttered some more. Finally, he left the room and returned with a hammer. I knew right then that the future of the game was in serious jeopardy.

I covered my eyes when he used the hammer to smack the rifle. At any second I expected to hear the sound of splintering plastic, followed by a stream of colorful words.

“There! It’s on!” he said. “And believe me, it will never come off again!”

The next step was inserting all of the batteries – about a case of them in various sizes. Finally, the game was ready to play.

I grabbed the orange rifle and my husband took the green one.

“Calibrate your rifle,” the message on the TV screen said. “Hit the target on the upper left.”

My husband shot at the target and missed. He tried again – but the rifle wouldn’t shoot.

“Pump the rifle to shoot another round,” the screen said.

He gave me a look that told me he wasn’t particularly pleased. “We have to pump these rifles after every shot?” he asked. “That’s going to be a real pain.”

“Move back and try again!” the screen said.

He took a few steps back and shot. Again, the screen told him the calibration hadn’t been successful and to move back a few more feet and try again.

By the time he finally succeeded in calibrating the gun, he’d moved back so many times, he practically was standing in the neighbors’ living room.

A deer-hunting game then popped up on the screen. “Shoot only the bucks,” the instructions said. “If you shoot a doe, the game is over.”

A forest scene appeared, complete with several deer with only their rear-ends visible.

“Which ones are the bucks?” I asked my husband.

“Probably the ones with the smallest rear-ends,” he answered, chuckling.

In a flash, the deer lifted their heads from the bushes and we saw antlers. We took three shots each...and hit nothing.

“Game over,” the screen said.

My husband and I stared at each other, dumbfounded. Neither one of us had hit a doe, so we were confused.

“I took only three shots!” my husband said. “Is that all we get?”

“If it is,” I said, “then this game must be for people with really short attention spans.”

We tried again. Sure enough, we each took three shots and the game was over.

My husband frowned. “Let’s try a different game.” He switched over to the jug-shooting game. The screen told him he once again had to calibrate his rifle, which meant he’d have to go through the whole stepping-back routine all over again.

That did it. He set down the gun and said, “This game really stinks. I think you should take it back to the store and get a refund.”

“And how do you intend to fit the guns back into the box so I can return them?” I asked. “You have to take them apart to do that, and you hammered the butt onto the green one and said it was on there for life!”

He grabbed the rifle and tried to remove the butt. Short of shoving a stick of dynamite into it, there was no way the thing was going to budge.

Since that day, the game has lived in its new home down in the basement, and probably will spend the rest of its days down there, collecting cobwebs with all of the other has-been toys that had exciting-looking boxes or advertising and turned out to be real duds.

And to any parents who get duped into buying similar toys for their kids this holiday season, my basement has some extra storage space you can rent...while you wait for the toys to someday become valuable collectors' items.

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