Stress Buddy Takes the Edge Off With a New, Improved Mate

In the beginning there was Stress Buddy. And he was good and sold for $9.95, retail.

But he was lonely. Even flexible, rubbery 6-inch-tall figures meant to be twisted this way and that get lonely.

So Bob Armstrong, the Rancho Bernardo inventor of Stress Buddy, begat Ms. Stress Buddy so that women, too, could have a figurine to relieve the angst of white-collar employment.

But the Australian distributor thought Ms. Stress Buddy, as fashioned by the manufacturer in Canton, was unsexy.

And so she will lose her vest and Marilyn Quayle hairdo before hitting the worldwide market this month. Also, she’ll be more buxom.

And, with Mr. and Ms. Stress Buddy will come Stress Buddy the computer game ($29.95, including both figurines).

“This is going to be Stress Buddy’s year,” Armstrong vowed. “I’m going to make him the grown-up’s Ninja Turtle.”

The computer game is for the super-stressed. Armstrong figures there’s a big market out there.

Just pop the floppy in your PC at work or home. Seven levels of difficulty and lots of variations.

The scenario: Stress Buddy is summoned to The Boss’s office at 5 p.m. Only the back of the boss’s bald pate is seen.

The boss asks menacing questions: Why isn’t your division meeting quota? What’s this about inter-department problems? What’s this about you having lunch with my boss? And more.

Stress Buddy (that’s you) has six options of response: Agree, Play Dumb, Patronize, Apologize, Grovel, Laugh It Off.

If it’s the right response, Stress Buddy (that’s you) lives to fight again. If not, he (you) will slip deeper into the mire.

The boss can have seven different moods for seven different questions. Reality City. You can even program it so The Boss has your boss’ name.

Call it a game for the ‘90s.

“This kind of product appeals to people in a recession,” Armstrong said. “Stress has never been higher.”

Familiar Faces

Politicians, past and present.

* Yes, that was former San Diego Councilman Ed Struiksma riding with a police officer patrolling South Mission Beach the other night.

No, Struiksma is not thinking of returning to his old job as a cop.

He’s just been named to the Police Department’s shooting review board. The ride-along was orientation.

* He was kicked off the government payroll amid talk of sexual harassment. Now he wants to get his job back.

Former Planning Director Robert Spaulding? No, former Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego).

On Saturday, Bates staged a campaign-style walk through North Park. On Monday, a Bring Back Bates fund-raising dinner in Old Town.

* News and a diaper, too.

State Sen. Lucy Killea (D-San Diego), complaining in a letter to the Sacramento Bee about lack of coverage of a Capitol press conference she staged:

“When I held a purely substantive press conference on legislation to license direct-entry midwives, a controversial and important bill to thousands of California women, we had a dozen witnesses, charts and a wealth of information, but not much in the way of visuals.

“Unfortunately, the Bee chose not to cover this story. Perhaps we should have scheduled a birth.”

Who’s Got the Money?

Here it is.

* Talk at City Hall: The council will probably not sue Robert Spaulding for the $100,000 the city paid to settle Susan Bray’s sex-harassment claim.

Unless Bray sues the city, alleging that the city broke the secrecy pledge.

As part of its defense, the council then would countersue Spaulding, saying anything Bray collects should come from him, not the city.

* Look for the U.S. Conference of Mayors at its June 14-19 convention in San Diego to blast as paltry the level of federal funding for AIDS research/health care.