More Skelanimals

This has definitely been the year of Skelanimals. They were all over, of course, at Halloween, thanks to their stuff being on sale at Target. However, once Halloween merchandise faded away, Skelanimals only expanded their territory! They've popped up with new stuff at Target (tho not very much), Toys R Us, and Borders.

Here's some photos of some of the Skelanimals stuff I spotted in Toys R Us. I was in the NYC flagship store, so of course there has to be some "I Love NY" merch! XD




(sorry for the bad photos. It was the day after Thanksgiving and it was a total madhouse in there. Not the best time or place to take pictures!! ^^;


I think these are also available at Borders.





More Skelanimals pix to come, as soon as I locate them on my hard drive again..

A Thanksgiving Story

I'm posting this quite a bit after Thanksgiving, and it's pretty much exactly what's already up on flickr, but I feel like I really ought to post it here anyway - these are the first Pinky photos I've taken in ages, and this WAS supposed to be a blog about Pinkys! They'd've been more on time, but the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is just too darn busy! >.<

I decided to use the 'triplets' to tell a story, just to see how it worked. I did it in a hurry, so the lighting is a bit off and there's a few other things I could've done better, but oh well!


"Phew! Home from school at last! I better change and start cooking!"

(I don't know why she had to go to school on Thanksgiving. Tough school. I don't know why she's doing all the cooking by herself either. Poor Pinky. ;)


"I'll start by making the salad"


"Looks like the bird is almost done..."

(Yeah, I put the turkey in the oven upside down. And it probably takes a lot longer to cook a turkey than my little story is allowing for. But what do I know? I've never cooked a turkey. I don't even eat them! XD)


"Oh no! I forgot the cranberry sauce!! I have to go back out!"


"Well, at least that wasn't too bad! I have the cranberries and it wasn't too crazy..."


"Well, at least the fruit salad is already done. I'm only a little behind schedule..."


"The food's done! Can you help me set the table please?"

Well, like it or not, Christmas is coming...

Yes, we all know it's earlier and earlier every year, and probably earlier this year than usual even. But I can't summon up much "Bah, humbug!" because I'm too excited to check out all the new toys and decorations!

Decorations-wise, Target has been in full gear since immediately after Halloween. They snuck a bit of Christmas merchandise in among the Halloween decorations even before that, but I'm talking full-on ceiling decorations:



It took them a bit longer (at least around here) to get all the merchandise out tho. I was excited to check in recently, however, and discover some of the Hello Kitty stuff was already rolled out. I can usually count on Target for some Kitty goodness, and they certainly didn't disappoint!

First up, we have some bath and body products:

I don't really like strong scents, so I am assuming I won't be too excited about any of this stuff, but how can you not love that case?! I am waiting for some sale action and then I'll probably scoop that up!


You may not be able to see it well, but the star of this package is that item at the top - it's a shower cap!

This one I will probably leave to the kids - it's a collection of various games:


And then if you are just in the market for stocking stuffers, I guess there's always this:

I think those were little lip glosses?

Of course, to me, the real payoff is in the Christmas ornaments. I love Christmas ornaments! If I'm not careful I'm going to have to upgrade to a bigger tree soon... ^^;

There are the usual selection (so far) of little plush Kittys, and mini ornament Kittys. The plush Kittys are not fuzzy, instead they seem to be made out of some sort of jersey/nylon material? They don't feel bad, but they seemed a little strange to me somehow. Not really a complaint tho, just an observation! ;)




The Santa one is my favorite...


...I wasn't that fond of the SnowKittys tho - they were kind of oddly proportioned... :/

I left the plushie ornaments in the store for now, but decided to buy the minis immediately, without waiting for a sale. The minis are the ones I really want for my tree, so I decided I could "splurge" and spend the $7...

Here they are, all in their box:



Let's get a closer look now! (click on the images here to make them bigger! These are uploaded directly to blogger, the ones above are linked back to my flickr acct, so they don't get bigger...)

The cook Kitty might be my favorite, she's so cute! And the glitter makes it look like she's been sampling her cooking... ;)


Kitty with pie is pretty darn cute too tho!


And look, Kitty is giving us a present! And isn't her coat great?


And finally, here's Kitty relaxing with some hot chocolate. :)

This was a pretty nice set of ornaments! I am pleased! hehe. I wonder if there might be another set of designs out there? I will keep my eyes open!

I checked Urban Outfitters for more Sanrio ornaments too, but either they aren't getting them, or they don't have them *yet*. I will keep checking!

I really have plenty of Christmas decorations, but there's always so many cute ones. Looking at the Sanrio webpage, I saw these cute decorations...

I'm hoping the Sanrio store near me might have the red bow and red wreath - otherwise I might have to hit up some mail order... o.O The Kitty Christmas tree does some sort of folding things where she turns into a Christmas tree with her Kitty face invisible. But it's really expensive. The advent calendar is cute, but I can probably live without.

While I was looking at the Sanrio website I found some other stuff I wanted (shocking, I know). I love winter themes!



Finally, before I close, one more item - this one from Toys R Us. I will be doing another post soon about Toys R Us and new Hello Kitty items, but this was the only Christmas theme one (so far?):



Now see? Early Christmas is not so bad... XD

Finally have Mir!

The other really great thing about our Pullip meet (aside from meeting all the great folks in the area!) was the fact that new dolls arrived to the store in time for the meet - including Mir!!! I've been waiting for Mir forever, I saw her as a prototype ages ago, but wasn't able to get her until now. I'm so happy to finally have!



Aside from having a beautiful face-up, her outfit is gorgeous! The dress is beautiful (tho all those little streamers at the bottom are actually loops of fabric, so it does a pretty good job as a feather duster. My lovely girl went home with more leaves than just the one she's holding in her pictures... XD



Her fairy tale is that of the celestial maiden/selkie who had her robes stolen so that she can't return home. You may be familiar with this tale from Ayashi no Ceres? I had been thinking of her in my head all this time as being named "Ceres", but now that she's here, I'm tempted to name her Ayame. It seems to be stickier. Hm. Well, I will ponder! XD

She comes with a lot of accessories too:

That pretzel thing is a barrette that goes in her hair - that's what makes her elaborate hair style. The concentric hoops on the other side of the picture is basically a hoop skirt! I as surprised by that! XD And then she comes with various bangles and hair clips and a little head dress as well. Also, tho I don't have a photo of them specifically, the boots are great!

One thing is for sure tho, she really is the palest of the pale. She's tricky to photograph! But I will do my best, of course, you can check my efforts here at her set... ;)

Also tricky is going to be convincing myself to change her outfit... I love her stock!

Pullip Meet at AniMadness!

Last weekend we had a pullip meetup at AniMadness. I've been to a lot of area meetups, and this is the biggest one ever! Pullip collectors came out of the woodwork, it was great!


Here's a picture of all our dolls hanging out on one of the dvd shelves.

I am not sure why we had such good attendance - maybe more people are collecting dolls, maybe people felt more comfortable coming to a store (we usually meetup in a park) or... oh yeah, maybe it was the prospect of buying a new doll for 10% off plus a free box of re-ment for anyone who brought a doll to the store! ;) It was really nice of the folks who own the store to let us have our meet there, and we're looking forward to having another one soon (maybe January?) - stay tuned to the dollymarket forum for details!

I'm not going to post any photos of the meetup here because I assume most of my blog readers are people that follow my flickr stream, but if you'd like to see them, check their set here!

While I was there, I could help but note all the new Sanrio goodies!


Look how incredibly adorable these My Melody plushies are! Esp. the one that's crying. Awwww... don't cry sweetie! And they were really reasonably priced - only like $25! Amazingly, I didn't buy one. But I'm still so tempted! If I don't spend a frightful amount of money at the Sanrio store in CT this weekend (more on that later), I will definitely have to go back for one. ...unless of course someone else has already scooped them up, which I think is highly likely!

They also had these cute little plushies - I like the red one best!

They are $12, not bad not bad! XD


Then there were the Kittys. These remind me of the Halloween skeleton (the only one I didn't buy!) but I don't think they are related. They have the same tag as these pirate Kittys:

I am guessing it is one of those Hello Kitty x Someone crossover lines, probably for Japan-only? I must say, AniMadness gets a lot of Hello Kitty stuff I've never seen before! Which is great, because if it weren't for them, Target, Tokai and Curious George Goes to Wordsworth in Harvard Square, selection is pretty sad here. Boston does not love Hello Kitty! I just realized that the kiosk in the Galleria Mall that just opened is gone. Boo to that! (it just opened! It was only back in June that it was "coming soon") This follows the demise of the kiosk in the Prudential Mall (later replaced by another kiosk? But the new one is not as good...) and, way earlier, of Kitty World on Newbury Street. Sigh.


Good thing AniMadness opened to keep me tempted, tho it's sometimes hard to pay too much attention to Kitty when there's Pullips around... ^^;

New Hello Kitty in the Dollar Aisle!

Target has added new stuff to their Dollar Aisle stuff now that Halloween is basically over. Aside from an alarming amount of Christmas stuff (already!) they have some new Hello Kitty items! These are not Christmas-themed, so maybe there will even be still more closer to Christmas? Exciting!

Aside from the usual cheap jewelry and hair elastics, the stamps from last year have returned (at least at my store):

I didn't buy one b/c I am pretty sure I bought one last year. I need to finish looking back through my collection tho (I'm trying to find things to get rid of... ^^;)

The lipgloss, however, was something I had never seen before, and it was super-adorable! <3

I didn't buy any of that either though because I don't think I'd use it, and I hate to have lipgloss hanging around unused. I may break down tho and get it because even if I just clean out the lipgloss without touching it, that would be a pretty cute little container, and that might be worth $1...

Something else that was different were these cute whiteboards:

I am not sure what I could do with a whiteboard now that I'm not in college, but it IS definitely adorable!

Then, of course, there were more kids socks. I didn't take a photo of those. I am always tempted to buy those, even tho I can't wear them (too small!) because I feel like I ought to be able to make doll sweaters out of them. I have not managed to work out a good pattern for that yet though...

I did buy the stickers - they may not be the most exciting stickers ever, but they were still worth a dollar I think!

The pen-type things next to them are crayons of some sort, I think you can swap around the colors inside.

I also had to pick up the lenticular notebooks - anything lenticular is a must!

And yes, lenticular is a weird word I only learned recently because I love this kind of thing so much. It's what you call that stuff that is sort of 3D and where the picture "blinks" between one thing and another. You can also recognize it from something like a hologram because when you scratch your fingernail across it, there's a texture and it makes a zipping sort of sound.

The pink one blinks, and the words change colors. The blue one is more elaborate and therefore harder to photograph. The pink one kind of "works" better, but the blue design is so much cuter!

The last thing I went home with was some ribbon and a deck of cards.

I thought about giving the cards away to a friend, but I didn't... ^^; I'm still trying to decide if I should, or if I should open them. I want to see the design so I probably will! (I am suspecting they are boring tho and look just like the package). There are two designs of cards. The other one is pink, but I did not photo it. There's only the two ribbon designs, and I got both of those. (yay ribbon! XD)

The last thing I noted over in the Dollar Aisle were these "fashion journals":

They have stickers that come with them:

(the pink stickers are exactly the same, just pink)

I was curious if there was anything inside that made them specifically "fashion" oriented, so I bought one, but apparently not


Sorry for the relatively terrible photos of the stuff I bought. It's been raining and I was in a hurry, so the lighting was awful... >.<

Target also snuck some new stuff into the toy aisle, namely these mysterious items:






I am very intrigued by these, and may have to buy some to check them out! You can read a bit more about how they are supposed to work on the back of the box.


There was also this cute little playset:


If you want to see more pictures of it out of the packaging, check out tomo.moko's excellent photos on flickr!

Down on the bottom shelf, this cute box caught my eye...



I have seen versions of these decorator Kitties (and Chococat and My Melody) floating around on flickr, so I guess this is Target's version.

Even the top of the box is cute! (of course! XD)


And then, finally, just one unrelated item - as I was walking out of the store, I saw these cute kids' PJs!

Scary Kitty is adorable! XD

Halloween Hello Kitty at Hot Topic

Before my Sanrio obsession got kind of out of hand in recent years, I really pretty much never set foot in Hot Topic. I don't look like I belong in Hot Topic. I'm sure they are happy to take my money nonetheless, but I feel foolish shopping there. ^^; Still, for goodies like these, how can I resist?



I went there specifically to get the ears because I saw them on someone else's flickr photostream. They didn't have any out, but I asked and she brought them out from the back for me. Lucky!

I wore the ears to a Halloween/doggie birthday party last weekend (early Halloween! XD). While I do not have any photos of myself wearing the ears (and probably wouldn't be willing to share them even if I did ;P) I can show you a photo of my friend's dog wearing them!

It's a touch blurry, but poor doggie wasn't that excited to wear them, as you might imagine. Still he was a good sport about it! My friend's dog is named "Captain Awesome" and I think he was awesome here indeed! ^__^

While I was buying the ears, I was looking at the other Sanrio Halloween products. They had the same (or close to the same) adorable "Kitty Frankenstein" and "Kitty as a Mummy" (2 versions - maybe one is new?) that they had last year. (I don't see the Frankenstein on their webpage, so maybe that is only available if your store has leftover stock? Or maybe it was never there and I'm just remembering from last year... ^^;) I'm not really a big fan of the Kitty t-shirts they sell at Hot Topic because they tend to be made from very thin fabric (not durable!) and to be a bit too long to look right on someone my height. Still, I love the Halloween Kitty stuff and really wanted a shirt last year anyway. So when I saw some Mummy Kitty jewelry and barrettes, I couldn't pass up buying *something*, right?


They were $8, which is a lot for barrettes, but I thought they would be just perfect because I could wear them myself for Halloween if I wanted, or I could just put them on my dolls. Plus they were not as likely to wear out after one use as the shirts were! (I don't see this on their website either, tho I do see a necklace. I have not spent much time on the Hot Topic website - is there a close correspondance between merchandise available there vs. the store?)

And, while I was there, I spotted some small items from the "Loves Nerds" theme. I saw this stuff originally at Sanrio Luxe in NY, but it was all so expensive... ^^; I think it was mostly all Loungefly stuff, and for some reason their bags are very expensive. (tho if you want one desperately, be sure to check online. I've seen it go on sale!) I don't want to spend $70 on a bag, but $2 on a pin is ok, right?


And how could I pass up this cute little keychain? I wear glasses! Hello Kitty is wearing glasses! It's like a requirement to get it, no?

And that was only another $5. Really, what's $5?

And oh, while I'm in line, what are those cute long socks I see?

They look good for the winter, no? And unlike the socks at H&M, the pattern is all over and not just on the toe. That's so much better! And socks are always useful, right? Esp. in the winter. $8 for socks isn't so bad...

And that, kids, is how you spend $30+ dollars at Hot Topic on stuff you didn't really need. >.<

I regretfully put away all the adorable Alice in Wonderland stuff I saw too, or it would've been more! One obsession at a time, I think... (I was eyeing some stuff with this cute mirror design - they had pins and keychains and suchlike - but if I'd seen this cute totebag, I might not have been able to pass it up! Still I have soooooo many totes! ^^;)

p.s. it looks like Hot Topic has the Hello Kitty Jelly Belly jelly beans I was reading about on hellokittyjunkie, so I may be going back for those soon...

As I was walking out of the store, I was telling my friend that she really needed to stage an intervention for me and keep me from spending so much money on Sanrio stuff I don't really need. Of course, no sooner had the words left my mouth than I saw this cute t-shirt at Journeys:

I had to have that too. I mean, come on! I was a (radio) DJ for years! How could I pass that up?! (they have this cute totebag too, but see above about too many totes... I see a very similar - but more expensive - tote on loungefly too, so if you were thinking of that, maybe this is a good cheap alternative!)

I think the idea that I will ever be able to resist much is only wishful thinking... *sigh* Still, how can I really regret buying such cute stuff?

AniMadness

AniMadness is a new store in Waltham, MA (one of the close suburbs of Boston if you aren't familiar with the area). It's an anime store, but they also carry pullips and Re-Ment. Hooray! I feel really lucky to have this store nearby! :)


(psst: you can clicky on all these photos to make them bigger... ;)



They also have a good selection of Sanrio stuff. Ok, it's not the overwhelming Kittyness of going to the Sanrio store (I'm getting spoiled!), but they good stuff - like UFO Catcher prizes:


They also have a bunch of Hello Kitty x Rody stuff:




You can see a cute Panda Kitty in the corner of that first photo, here is a better shot of the panda twins. They've been at the store for a while now, and they have batteries/motors so that their head shakes. Can you believe no one has bought them yet? (Can you believe I haven't?! XD)




Then there are these other Panda Kitty pillow/plushies. They are amusing!


And just some cute big plushies:


It's hard to believe, but here it is, already time for Christmas decorations to make their sneaky appearance...



Still, when it's domo-kun plushies, you can't mind too much, right? ;)

My favorite of the lot is the 'failed attempt at gift-wrapping' one:


But this one is pretty cute too:


Finally, the store also had these guys - not Christmas related, but cute!


These are current photos of some of their new stuff, but you can see older photos (or if you are reading in the future, new photos! XD) here at my flickr set.

More New Hello Kitty...

...at both Toys R Us and Target. Kitty's 35th Anniversary is apparently spawning a Hello Kitty bonanza! Tho it could be that there's not more HK stuff than there ever was and I'm just noticing it more because of my accelerating Sanrio addiction. Or it could be that they are just making a bigger push to sell things in the US market again - it's hard to say! In the end tho, the important thing is: more Kitty! XD

First up, these adorable new mini plushies at Toys R Us!





My favorite is that edamame one! (I think there were actually 4 designs, but I need to go back tonight and look at my original files. I am not sure if I uploaded the wrong file last night, or if I was mistaken at the store...) Of course the "cat in food" genre has been well-covered already by San-X's Nyan Nyan Nyanko line, so there's nothing new or different here. You might even think Sanrio is being (dare we say?) a copycat (ha! Cat! Get it? ;P) but I think there's more than enough room in the world for many cats in food. Tho they were adorable, I didn't buy any. I am not sure what I would do with them (I'd hate to take them out of their package!) and I have sooooo much Kitty stuff - plenty from this weekend alone! ^^;

Toys R Us also had some Kitty items in their candy aisle. Many types I had seen before (Hello Kitty face tins, for instance) or these marshamallow lollipops:

I actually got the pink one for my birthday from a friend a few months back, but I haven't been able to bring myself to eat it... Poor Kitty! ^^;

However, I was not able to resist these cute hard candy packages:

The little Kitty figures were so adorable that I had to get one of each! I did try to put one back, but in the end I couldn't find one "less cute" than the others. At $1.50 for candy I probably won't like, this wasn't the best use of my money, but... Alas, the addiction is hard to resist...

I almost missed the new Kitty stuff in Target - I checked out the Toy Aisles and the Halloween stuff and we were leaving the store when we ran into a clerk who had these cute pink earphones. She said they were Hello Kitty and there was a new selection of Hello Kitty stuff over in electronics! So of course the electronics section had to be checked out!

Impressive, isn't it? In case it is hard to see, moving from left to right/top to bottom, we have walkie talkies starting us out in the top left corner, then digital cameras in the top right corner. Next row brings us a USB drive, the headphones, and iPod/iPhone skins. The next row has an optical mouse/mouse pad combo and an analog phone. Down on the bottom is a CD player and two styles of alarm clocks. I do need a new alarm clock, which makes those tempting, but I kind of wanted one with a cd player. Hm...

Way, way down at the bottom, cut off by the photo (I couldn't back up any further because of the camera display in back of me... XD) is a Karaoke system:

Kind of an amusing product!

Of course I went home with the headphones I'd gone there to buy, so here's a closer look at those:

This was very well-timed for me since my last headphones just broke! I haven't had a chance to open the package and try them out yet, so I am not sure how good the sound quality is. If it's decent, I might be tempted to buy a second pair - in case the first pair wears out! (I hate to admit it, but my headphones do tend to eventually bite the dust...)

I also felt like I couldn't leave the store without the USB drive...

I just bought a USB drive a few months ago and it has been very handy! But... I am not at all sure I need TWO of them. Still, the included software seemed intriguing. I am not sure, I am still teetering. I may return it!

One thing about this USB drive tho is that it is not terribly expensive. It cost $15 for 2GB. I bought a relatively 'cheap' 4 GB USB drive (in the sense that I could've paid more. But it seems like the one I have is just fine!) for $20. So making it a Hello Kitty product does not seem to have added much to the price. This is a little bit different than Hello Kitty electronics I have seen in the past. Very often it has seemed like Hello Kitty electronics items were much more expensive than their equivalent non-Hello Kitty products. This has been particularly noticeable with the cameras - which makes that camera in the upper right of the display interesting! I didn't notice until I was peering at my picture (I was in a bit of a hurry when I visited the store) but that camera is only $15! I wonder how many megapixels it has? My camera phone has 2 MP, and it takes terrible photos, so my guess is that it would not be worth buying the "Kittycam", but I will have to go back and take a closer look...

New Barbies at Toys R Us and Target

Well, as Christmas creeps closer, it looks like new toys are getting rolled out. Barbie has had several new dolls introduced to stores - here's some photos I took at Target and Toys R Us over the weekend.
There were some of the 'Candy Glams' on sale at Target, but I wasn't fast enough to get the ones I liked. I'll continue hitting up the discount stores (Big Lots, Tuesday Morning, TJ Maxx, Marshall's) and hope I get lucky. So far my quick ventures to those stores have mostly been strike-outs.
But on to the new things!

First up are the Barbies on the new bodies. They say "100+ poses". I didn't buy one to try it out, but they do look much nicer then the old bodies. Cute clothes too!

(You can't see so well here, but there's a bit of metallic in the dress. It's more nice than tacky for once. The boots are kinda lame tho. So maybe if this goes on sale)

This one is the big winner in terms of cute clothes:

I may get her even *before* she goes on sale! But I have been a bit bad this week (too much Hello Kitty) so she'll have to wait on that.

Then there is the new "So in Style Sis" line. That also has some cute clothes!

I really like the skirt on the one on the right. I don't think I'll ever be getting her tho. The amount of extra stuff that comes with her pretty much guarantees she will never be cheap...


I guess this is the "sis"? I think this is a new 'little kid' body type for Barbie? She looks 'older' than Kelly, if I figure 'skinnier and taller' to mean older. I don't know that Barbie needs to be making their little kid dolls skinnier and taller (isn't that why everyone hated Barbie in the first place?) but these do look cute. I am wondering if the little clothes will fit anyone's tiny dolls? I only have the pinkys, so I can't be sure.


This one was my favorite - check out the cute kitty shirt! The art supplies aren't too bad either. She is definitely going on my list of things to buy sooner or later.

And then for some reason, this little ballerina caught my eye:

She's for the very young 'uns. That bodice is part of her costume. So nothing I would ever buy. Maybe I just like the package?

Toys R Us had two dress set exclusives as well:



I prefer the clothes of the one on the bottom. Probably too much pink for me to worry about buying tho...

Meanwhile, Disney has been pumping out Princess dolls like there's no tomorrow. I am not interested in Princess clothes, so I don't much care, but I kind of like their display at Target:

You can spin that thing over on the right to select a Princess and then push a button to hear her song. Fancy! They must've paid a pretty penny for that shelf space.

Target also had some new Project Runway toys that seemed pretty cool. There's nothing I would buy for myself, but if I actually were buying toys for a kid, I'd give these some serious consideration: