Valentine's Day!

Ok, this is going to be another long post! It's been taking me forever to pick away at getting all the pictures uploaded. I went to Target and 'surveyed' (haha, makes me sound official) all the Hello Kitty Valentine's merchandise. There's a lot of it!

First up, we have the cards. There are two types of 'little kids' Valentine's Day cards available. I am referring to the little tiny cards that you give out in school. (why do we do that again? how do kids get suckered into such a ridiculous thing, esp. as it's some other fool thing to spend money on? No one is really in love in grade school, so you either get kids that feel bad because they aren't popular enough to get cards, or you get scenarios where everyone has to give everyone a card - which prevents kids from feeling unpopular, theoretically, but serves no purpose except to make greeting card companies happy. Hm) Anyway, there's two types of Hello Kitty cards available in this category. One is Lenticular (more about those below) and the other comes with pencils you can give away. Here's the pencil version:


I included the Barbie and Phineas and Ferb cards too, just for fun. (I am a huge fan of Phineas and Ferb - Dr. Doofenshmirtz or however you spell his name is so funny!)

Here's the back:

Both the Kitty and Barbie designs are cute, but nothing amazing. The P&F cards are kind of disappointing, the sayings are mostly not that funny. But oh well, nice to see them there anyway.

There was, surprisingly, quite a lot of Hello Kitty toys for V-day. Since when is this a holiday to give toys to kids? Well, I would buy this stuff for me, so maybe they have caught on to the fact it's not for kids? (or even people in love?)


There was a friendship bracelet making kit (ok, THIS has to be for kids... no?)


And a kit to make a Hello Kitty plushies (I DID buy this. I mean, it was only $5! $5!! How could I not?!)


And stickers (I did not buy stickers. I wanted to, but I'm trying to cut back. They're really cute, but a roll of stickers is too hard to store. Esp. since I'd totally want to keep the adorable packaging... sigh)

And then, moving away from the V-day aisle, I found some Hello Kitty and My Little Pony card packs:



And Hello Kitty and My Little Pony Stickers:

There was probably as many MLP products as Hello Kitty products, btw, but I didn't take pictures because I am not really into MLP... ^^;

Some of the general holiday merchandise (back in the Valentine's section) is pretty cute too!

I really like those owl bags, but I don't need them for anything. So I'm debating whether to just buy some now or whether to wait to see if I can catch them on clearance... Hm.


I thought this box of candy was adorable. Too bad I'm a boring single person so I don't have anyone to buy it for me... >.< (maybe I can get that on clearance too. Haha)

Because Hello Kitty items sold out way before Christmas, I decided I'd better buy the cute stuff now and not wait for sale/clearance. There wasn't much I was dying to have anyway, but of that list of 'must haves' the first was the lenticular valentine's cards. I love anything lenticular. I even think it's great that there's a word that describes it, because I didn't know as a kid. I'm talking, in case you also have not been clued in about this word, about the cards that flip between 2 or more designs. They are made of ridged plastic, so when you run your fingernail over them, it makes a little scraping sound. They can also be used to make 3D pictures (the kind you can see without glasses) and I always thought they were just about the coolest thing ever. My grandmother sent me a bunch of 3D postcards like this, I think that's how the love got started. So my $3 went out for a bunch of cards I'll never use! XD

Here's the front of the package:



On the back, they talk about 9 designs, but I'm not so sure about their math. You get 9 cards per sheet, and you get 3 sheets. However, each individual card flips between 3 different designs. I'm not sure that you get 3 x 9 = 27 different designs. I think some are reused. But probably each set of 3 is unique for each of the 9 cards. Actually, all this math is making MY head hurt. Just be aware that the designs shown here on the back of the package are not actually ALL of the designs! XD



Here's the cards:



And then here's the back of the cards:



I appreciate the fact that the package mentions you should use colored pencil or permanent marker on the cards. I am forever using the wrong kinds of pens on cards because it's so hard to tell what is going to work on which surface, even when I try to guess carefully! Also, the majority of my pens don't work well with greeting card (coated) paper. Now what would be *really* awesome would be if they made more cards that worked with gel pens... >.>

Taking a closer look at some of the cards, here's the cutest design, I think:


(the middle one, I mean!)

And then, just for a fuller example, here's all 3 views of the card over on the far right above:



I love the ducks! So funny!

I also bought the Kitty stickers, just because I have been buying all of the sticker designs I see. So here's a (slightly) better view of those:



These are actually pretty similar to the roll stickers and the cards I didn't buy, so I think I'm covered for this design! XD You get two sheets, which is nice, even tho it's not like I use these stickers anyway.

You also get some cute packaging, even if not AS cute as the roll stickers...



I also found a few new Hello Kitty items in the toy aisle (no Valentine's Day connection)


New puzzle design. I've seen a little lunchbox with Hello Kitty as a cowboy too (not at Target, I'll try to get that posted later). I love this new design!

Then they had these cute little houses. They remind me of the cooking show playset from earlier...



I did not see again these V-day Hello Kitty plushies I had seen last month - I don't know if they sold out, or if they just weren't at this Target. I will have to look again at one of the other locations (I have to go to a different Target tonight anyway, since the one I was at the other day was out of stock of my shampoo... >.<)





I also did not see these Skelanimals plushies - I wonder if I missed anything in between when these disappeared and the new things appeared? ^^;