My boyfriend and I get Elfed

My boyfriend's Mom sent us our very first Office Max Elf Yourself card of the year. See me and Jack as elves!

We will now, no doubt, begin to receive four thousand of these a day. This looks to be the third year in a row that Office Max is sponsoring Elf Yourself, and there are a few interesting changes:

1. JibJab has a clear and obvious branded presence at the beginning of the E.Y. video. This isn't a bad thing, especially considering how JibJab is famous for their political themed videos.

2. You are immediately prompted to buy merchandise such as mugs and t-shirts with the image of yourself Elfed. Not sure this is smart. The excitement is seeing your personalized Elf in motion, not on a dish rag.

3. You can download the video! SMART! But it's 5 bucks to download! DUMB! Very very dumb. I can't believe someone let this go through. It's the holidays! People are passing it around! Does Office Max want to portray itself as a cheap bastard of a company that'll nickel and dime you for the Elf video that you spent your time creating? You can't even embed the video on a blog. This is blogger and web 2.0 failure in the worst degree.

But, alas, the new videos are funny. And I'm sure I'll be sending out 100 of these over the course of the week. I'll just warn friends not to download or buy anything from those scheisters.

See me and Jack as elves!

ELF YOURSELF