Tag Archives: toys

Today’s bloggerating was interrupted not once, but twice by one of the library’s most famous patrons, last year’s Asian Idol.

I mention her again not only because she happens to be annoying the shit out of me at present by asking me dumb questions with a whiny slant because she’s doing her project at the last minute which means that it’s my responsibility to take her hand and walk her through every step of her research.  No, it’s not just that.  I mention her again because I think her life is kind of amazingly tragic.  One minute she’s an Asian superstar, the next she’s in a shitty suburb in the U.S. and she’s changed her name to Cecilia.

That’s like being forced to move from Emerald City to Craplakistan and change your name to Dong.

I guess I’d act like a dumb bitch, too, if that happened to me.  Shooooot.

Oh well.  On with the bloggerating:

I am now a proud collector of miniatures, which I prefer to call “tiny things” because “miniatures” suggests that I subscribe to The American Miniaturist which I DO NOT and anyway when I did it was an accident which they fixed and then accidentally kept sending me the magazine, as magazine companies usually do because they’re stupid and anyway I’d like to see what kind of magazines come to YOUR house so shutup.

So, yeah.

I bought these the other day:

They’re called PuchiPetites.  They are very tiny, handmade, Barbie-sized foods for you to fuck around with when you’re bored with normal sized foods.  Every tiny jar opens, every lid comes off, every tiny little piece is movable and comes complete with a teensy label with poorly translated Japanese all over it.  The Sn0-Cone says “Cold: it is a time.”

I am not going to tell you where I got these, because then you will be unable to resist going and buying a bunch of them, and you’ll have them, and I won’t, and why the hell would I give you something for me to be jealous about?  That would be dumb.

I will tell you, however, that the nice lady who sells these saw them at a Barbie exposition, as they are imported by Barbie fanatics all the way from Japan to play special roles in Barbie dioramas.  (She notes on her site that a diorama without any PuchiPetite in it has absolutely zero chance of winning a contest at a Midwestern Barbie expo these days…FYI.  They are just too perfect.)

I’ve got my eye on the Birthday Set, and of course, the Cupcake Set.

I’m really not sure why I paid money for these.  But judging on the variety of exactly what is available for purchase from the PuchiPetite people, I predict that I will be in serious stone-cold debt by 2010.  Just look at this shit:

Why does this get me so excited?  And by “this” I don’t mean all the colors and crazy writing up top.  I mean MINI STUFF.  I mean STUFF THAT IS TINY.  Why do I love it so much?  Why do I get more enjoyment out of a candy apple I have to pick up with my fingernails than I get out of the real thing?

My sister and I had a dollhouse when we were kids.  My grandma was all into dollhouses–like seriously, she spent hours in her garage in the winter carefully attaching tiny stones to the chimney with hot glue, layering tiles onto the roof, slicing tiny bits of thin carpet to fit the little dolly rooms of her two 3 story doll mansions.  Then she’d dig through craft stores for tiny spoons and forks and matching plate sets, paintings for the walls, little chairs, sheets for the dolly beds.  The dolls themselves were nothing to write home about.  They were pretty much just a bendy wire frame with little plastic hands and feet at four of the five ends, and an empty plastic head at the top.  Their central wire was wrapped with nylon strips so when you took off their old-timey clothes they looked like mummies.  I used to hijack all of their Victorian dress and pile them all in the teensy bathroom together, nekkid as jaybirds.  “Why did someone do this to us!” they would scream.  “Our dignity is destroyed!  We are all NAKED!”  Eventually one of them would have to use the tiny toilet, because there was no sign of rescue, and the rest of them would politely face the wall.

So based on the fact that my grandma’s appreciation for dolly-sized things was pretty serious, you would think that the dollhouse, and its components, she bought for myself and my sister would be equally serious.  You would think.  NOT SO.  We got the crappiest little duplex you could imagine.  The stairs were plastic, for chrissakes.  The picket fence was painted onto the outside of the cardboard wall.  And I don’t recall exactly but I bet the place came with dollhouse-sized rats and a dollhouse-sized group of Latin Kings down the street.  And the dollhouse dumpsters were right by the kitchen window, filled with dolly sized syringes.  It was a bad place, and they gave us so little crappy ass furniture to go with it that we were reduced to using the plastic lid spacer thing they used to put in the middle of Pizza Hut pizzas as a kitchen table.  Our doll family had to share a bed.  All four of them, one bed.  Yeah, they were a pretty skanky family.

Am I obsessed with tiny things because I am a girl?  Or because I’m making up for the tiny tragedy I faced as a child with a sub-par dollyhouse?

(And what are you supposed to DO with tiny stuff, anyway?  Know what I did with my first three official sets of PuchiPetites Mini Sweets?  I tore into the boxes with my teeth and carefully set up all of my mini food sets on my desk, where I should be doing work.  Then I just, you know…looked at ’em.  I can’t think of a whole lot else to do with them.)

So when I was ten, American Girl decided to cash in on the fetish for tiny-ness shared by most girls in the 8-12 range.  They busted out the Illuma Room, which was basically a white box with magnetic walls, a drawer underneath, and an electrical cord so you could plug the whole thing in.  Not only did it light up, but the things you put in it would make sounds and do all manner of other amazing stuff.  The idea was that you bought the light box and the drawer for like $100, then you bought one of the themed sets and went apeshit with the details:

So yeah.  As a pre-teen I salivated over the diner, the horse stable, the New York loft apartment, and the Purple Room.  I couldn’t have them at the time because an entire set would run your momma about $200.  And I can’t have them now because an entire set (all played with and missing pieces and scratched up and only half-working) will now cost you around $500.

Except for this bitch, who had amazing luck and got the whole diner set for $1.50 at a Goodwill.  Fuck that whore.  I hope she gets twat rabies and leaves me the tiny diner in her will.

I hope someone out there shares my mania over tiny things that look like real things.  I hope that someone isn’t a total weirdo.  Then I will have hope for my future.

But either way I am still buying this and this so mehh.

Hell on wheels.

Last night I dreamed that I was at the Skate Palace in Muddy, Illinois.  It’s this warehouse with a smooth floor and a snack counter and a skate rental service and a dark hall full of benches covered with cum-soaked carpet where you change into your fungus-filled rented skates.  It’s a real place where I spent many hours on the sidelines as a kid, nursing skating injuries on my face, hands, and knees.  Anyway, in my dream, I had gotten there just in time for Skate Limbo, but the original limbo song was replaced with a My Chemical Romance cover.  Then I lined up all of my friends, but denied them the pleasure of going through the limbo line and instead lectured that they should appreciate me more.  I have never wanted out of a dream more in my entire life.

Sparklepants

I was a cupcake for Halloween and it involved pink glitter tulle.  I don’t know if you know as much as I do about tulle, but it’s hard for a tulle to hold a glitter.  So I am still finding pink glitter everywhere. Yes, even there.