Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Objets du Jour - Barbapapa Plastic Toys
























Aren't these adorable?

(Aside - Please read "adorable" in your best Craig Ferguson voice. I love how he says that word! Now, back to our post.)

It doesn't take much to get me off on a toy tangent. When link surfing landed me on the Swedish site of Green Jelly Toys, I had to look at, well, pretty much everything. These little guys really grabbed me. They are 4 to 8 cm tall and sell for 49 kronor, or about seven bucks apiece.

Of course, I knew nothing about them, but that's what Wikipedia is for.
Barbapapa is both the title character, and name of the "species" of said character, of a series of children's books written in the 1970s by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor, who resided in Paris, France. The books were originally written in French, and were later translated into many languages. As short cartoons of a length of only five minutes, they reached a broader audience via TV.

Barbapapa himself is a generally pear-shaped, pink shapeshifting blob-like creature who stumbles upon the human world and tries to fit in. The shapeshifting is usually accompanied by the saying "Clickety Click Barba Trick". After various amusing adventures, he comes across a female of his species (more shapely, and black-coloured), named Barbamama. They produce seven children, known as the Barbababies, each a different colour.
Well, the books are cute, but they don't hold a candle to the toys. If I had money, I'd be inclined to see if I could search some out on Ebay.

It's amazing how much you save by not having any money!

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1 comment:

Di Overton said...

Very big in France.