I heard this story as a freshman at TEP and thought it was totally hilarious. I tested it by buying a few ETs at the Children's Museum, and tossing them to a couple of our older alums (Crusher and Leper to be exact). They both screamed and dropped the ETs like they were on fire. This was considered good by me. So I bought a dollars worth or so. And the next time I went to the Museum, I bought another dollars worth. And another. And another. Then I had fun lining them up in big rows on my computer (hostname phone-home), on my bookshelves etc. Every now and then, one or two would disappear, and show up mangled, or burnt by a stove's flame, or hanging in a noose from my doorframe with its face burnt off (these all happened). But all in all, my ETs made me happy, and made my brothers think I was weird.
Which is why this is the absolute super coolest Secret Satan present ever in the history of TEP. Somebody (and I still don't have a confirmation on who) created this set of custom-painted ETs of all sorts and varieties, with beautiful little costumes, and gave it to me as my Secret Satan present my senior year. There's even an ET representation of me, wearing a TEP jersey, blue jeans, with the long black hair I had at TEP made of yarn. It's phenomenal. You can click on the pictures below for a closer look.