Mui-Chan and the Smoking Elephant

Having been sent home from work early today due to the 'severe weather conditions' (i.e. snow) disrupting all transport ever, I ended up scouring the internet for unaffordable toys. I was reminded of the brilliant Mui-Chan by iXTEE, with her bizarrely asymmetrical facial expression which lends itself so well to lively photographs (lively for an inanimate object anyway. I'd like to see a stop-motion animation featuring Mui-Chan so if you're in the business for such things I hope you'll consider it!)

I am missing my Blythe doll, Miss Sally Rice, from whom I have been separated temporarily (I will add a photo of her when we are reunited! She has blue/green hair and four eye colour options. ^-^)

Fellow Japanophile Alice Urbino has introduced me to the Puchi Puchi Edamame Soybean keyring, an object of inexplicable yet somehow reassuring appeal. Surely the world can't be such a bad place when people play gleefully with plastic peas in a pod with faces which are advertised in the manner shown below? Okay, my argument is flawed, I admit it, but please enjoy the video at your leisure.

I am also reminiscing about Taipei Toy Festival, which I attended in summer 2008. Held at the Core Pacific City Living Mall, whose concept is based on a death star. Yes, it's a mall. Architecturally based on a death star. Oh, I miss Taiwan.

The toy festival itself featured everything from the increasingly popular Tokidoki range by Simone Legno to a lowlife elephant covered in blood and smoking out of its tusk hole. The impossibly cute fighting cats (see top and bottom of the post) were probably my favourites. I took quite a lot of photos but will resist posting them all here...

By the way, apologies for not crediting the photos of Mui-Chan and Core Pacific Living Mall - I forgot to take note of where I found them so if you can enlighten me then please do so. I will credit or remove them if necessary. All other photos are my own.