Happy August

It's clearance season! Clearance season is generally either fantastic or terrible depending on what you like. In my experience, this is the time when stores try VERY HARD to clear out all the failed product lines. Since I pay attention to toy stock all year, I'm rarely surprised by what goes on clearance. It's usually whatever they've been trying to get rid of for months reduced even more. This year I was pretty sure that the O.O.T.W. dolls were failing, which I think I'm right about based on clearance stock. In 2010-11, it was like like watching in slow motion as Cepia's Kung Zhu hamsters failed spectacularly. Though, that is probably a story for another post because I could talk for ages about how much I love Zhu Zhu/Kung Zhu. My point is that while liking a line that sells well is GOOD because there will be more new things, sometimes it's fun to like the toys that don't sell as well because you end up with tons of them for very little money. Often clearance is filled with the toys that you don't understand why they were manufactured in the first place. Case in point, this plush Gargamel doll from the Smurfs, which is marked down to $5.98 from $19.99, because of COURSE it is.

Anyone could have predicted this would end up in clearance.

 I ended up buying just a few things. All animal toys, of course. The first is a set of Pound Puppies toys, apparently a Toys R Us exclusive. These aren't marked down so much that I was going to buy ALL of them, though I kind of wanted to. I haven't seen the newest cartoon incarnation of Pound Puppies, so I don't know if it's any good, but none of these dogs seem to be main characters on the show anyway, and I am eternally a sucker for plastic dogs. It was quite tough to pick which set to buy as they had most of them, although, of course not the set with the secret handshake/brofist dogs, since that would be the obvious choice.

 You only get 2 pieces of plastic in these sets; either 2 puppies or a puppy and an object.  The soccer ball is a lie. The adoption certificate is cardboard and about business card size.  You can print additional ones on their website.  I finally settled on this set for the probably-pomeranian-possibly-samoyed. The paint is imperfect, but I quite like them and if they went on sale for any less, I probably would pick up the rest of them. My favorite detail is the outline of the paw prints that appear on their feet.

 As much as I like my new plastic puppies, my new prized possession is my Xia Xia hermit crab. Another effort from Cepia to recapture the Zhu Zhu pets craze was this line of battery-powered crabs. They have detachable shells and they sell the shells alone so that you can swap them around. They also had a few buildings/structures to play with them in. I've been watching this line fail basically from the start, I think. I guess kids aren't into crabs? The website for them is already completely gone. In any case, stores have been trying to unload them for months and months and while I kind of wanted one, it seemed like they had SO MANY that if I just waited, eventually I could have one for almost nothing. I was right, and now I own "Tobago" the battery-powered crab and 2 extra shell sets for a whopping $4 total ($2 for crab, $1 per extra shell). He has an on/off switch and he skitters both forward and backward at a tap to his claws. He looks like a cartoon superhero because of his giant chin. If the Power Pete were a blue, plastic crab, this is what he would look like. I've re-named the crab Power Pete.  I also love his black, beady eyes, as they remind me of original Littlest Pet Shop baby pets and their soulless eyes.

 I don't understand why kids weren't into these because this is the best $2 I have spent in ages. The short burst of motion is very entertaining; I'm thinking of putting him in to play with the Zhu Zhu pets. They knew when they've hit something and move in the opposite direction for a bit. The shells come with tiny "collectable surprises" or "little friends," which are TINY objects with an intense plastic smell about them that you can store inside the crab's shell and also have a hole in the bottom that can attach to a peg on the outside of the shell for additional decoration. Admittedly, these tiny objects are very weird. I have 5 altogether-- a rubber duck, a penguin, a fish driving a car, a globe with a face, and a …computer or TV monitor with a face. But I like the crab so much that I don't really care that these elements are weird. Now my crab's default shell has a lightning bolt on it, which I quite like, and I bought a yellow one and another blue one that is MY FAVORITE THING:

The design of this shell is a chicken face. CHICKEN FACE! I have no idea why this shell exists, but I'm really pleased I get to own one for a dollar. I love my crab, he was definitely worth $2.