Tiny Tuesday - The Ridiculous Shopkins Affair

I have been skipping Tiny Tuesday lately because I wanted to post about this but it caused some weird stuff that I'm having trouble processing.
A while ago, I was at our local shop and I noticed that they had the new Shopkins Happy Places blind boxes so I decided to grab one. Turned out the boxes were printed with four different designs, so I grabbed one of each.
I got home, opened them up and the little trinket above was in one of them. A limited edition! Yay! I've never seen a Moose limited edition before. I never expect to get one and frankly don't even think about them because the chances of getting one are so remote.
It took less than an hour for the initial excitement to wear off and for me to realise that this was way less exciting than the toy I otherwise would've gotten in it's place. My shopkins dolls have no use for a projector and being all one colour with no painted details, it has very limited play value. I have never been less impressed by a toy.
But I posted a picture of it on Instagram anyway. Oh dear. I didn't know that the blind boxes hadn't really been released pretty much anywhere yet. I spent the next forty eight hours fielding private messages from people I'd never even heard of before. Some were fairly reasonable. "Where'd you get that?", "What kind of pack did that come in?", "Could you upload a pic of the collector's list?" Some were less reasonable "Can you upload a picture of each individual item in the collector's list? The pictures you've put up aren't clear enough." "Would you be willing to go back to where you got that, buy the rest of their blind boxes and mail them to me so I can get a limited edition too?" "You should give that to me."
I kid you not. I got a message from someone basically saying "You should give that to me." I assumed they were joking and messaged back that I was considering putting it on Ebay since I don't want it and could send them a link when I did. They weren't joking. Over the next two hours I got eight abusive messages from that person saying I was a money-hungry b*tch, who thought I was going to make my fortune with this thing on Ebay, but they were going to tell everyone not to buy it because I was this, that and the other. And anyone who bought it wouldn't pay me for it and blah, blah, blah. Then twelve hours later an apology and a "so when Ebay goes to sh*t on you, contact me and I'll do a trade." Yeah, no. I didn't reply to that but if I had it would've said something along the lines of "After that outburst, I'd sooner set it on fire than send it to you, thanks." Incidentally, I have no delusions about making a fortune selling it on Ebay. My thinking was, I don't want it. Anyone that wants it enough to be willing to pay for postage is welcome to have it. Anyone that's willing to pay much more than the price of postage is a bit silly and will probably be disappointed in it.
That was the most extreme example but there were about half a dozen collectors with absolutely ridiculous requests that all had tantrums, if I said no. I wasn't photographing every individual item on the collector's list. There are something like sixty items and it had already taken me an hour to photograph each page of the collector list so the pictures were in focus with minimal glare. I also wasn't spending a hundred dollars on toys and fifty dollars on across the world postage for someone I didn't know, on the promise of "I'll pay you back when it gets here."  While I knew it had come in one of my blind boxes, I had no idea which one it had come out of so I couldn't tell people which blind box design to look for. Or even if all the limited editions have the same picture on the box. And almost all of these people reacted with nasty little tantrums.
These were not children. I did actually get a few private messages from children saying things like "That's so cool/awesome! Congratulations!" Which weirded me out a bit. Who lets their ten year old think it's ok to send private messages to strangers? But all of the nasty, abusive, angry, nonsense came from adults! Which is so much wronger and weirder. Seriously, I have not bought a single Shopkins thing since then. The whole thing has left a nasty taste in my mouth and frankly I don't want to collect Shopkins if the entire Shopkins collecting community is full of entitled arseholes.
And all over THIS. . .

Which, in all honesty, is probably the most disappointing and pointless toy I have ever seen!

Tiny Tuesday - Chelsea Cheeseburger. Shopkins get really creepy.

 I haven't mentioned my Shopkins Happy Places house in a while. I've been waiting until I get my hands on all the new furniture sets, so I can get it done all at once. Unfortunately there is still one set I haven't been able to find anywhere and I'm still not quite desperate enough to spend forty dollars for it on ebay. Part of the problem seems to be every shop seems to still have a million of the bathroom sets from the first season, so they're not restocking. That's a slight exaggeration but we were recently at a Target that had three of last season's bedroom set, one of last season's kitchen set and FORTY-FIVE of last season's bathroom! When I first got the bathroom set, I did not like the doll that came with it. She was wearing a robe and had yellow bubbles in her hair. Why yellow? I don't know. The yellow bubbles really bug me. But now seeing how many of that set, with that doll are still in shops, probably never to be sold, I feel bad for that doll instead. My husband says that's weird.

Anyway, I couldn't wait to show this little doll. Chelsea Cheeseburger. She's one of the individually packaged dolls that comes with two accessories and she's super cute.

There is nothing to not like here! It's all wins! Brightly coloured, burger themed, sailorish dress - cute! Adorable hamburger hair accessory - cute! Screaming, red hair - cute! Pigtails - cute! Bright, red shoes - cute! The cold, dead eyes of a killer - Wait! What!? Ah, it seems Chelsea isn't so cute after all. Let's take a look at the back of her packaging . . .

It seems Chelsea Cheeseburger is off to the Puppy Parlour (aka loungeroom) to smile as she shares some tasty grilled treats with her Petkins (sentient furniture) friends! And what tasty treat is she sharing with her demonic coffee table and couch? Why that perky little cheeseburger that's smiling at her so trustingly in the photo above! Yay! Cannibalism!

Not quite so cute now!
Don't get me wrong, I still think these are absolutely adorable but there are so many details that just make me shake my head and wonder how they happened. Like how did anyone make up the story of Chelsea bringing a new friend along as a sacrifice to be eaten alive by her and her friends wasn't just disturbing?
It is funny though.

Shopkins Happy Places. Fun but possibly the creepiest thing ever.

Shopkins Happy Places house exterior.

It's happened. I've lost my damned mind and gotten into Shopkins. Not the weird "What the hell are you even supposed to do with these?" Shopkins that have been around for a few years now, but the newer, smaller, Happy Places, dollhouse Shopkins.
 I've been eyeing the dollhouse sets ever since they came out but hadn't really intended on buying any of them. Then I was sent out to buy myself a Christmas present from the Giant Baby and somehow came home with the dollhouse. The very next day, the same shop had the Party Studio house extension in stock. That found it's way under our Christmas tree too. And then through various sources by the time Christmas was over I had all of the furniture and doll sets that go with the basic house and the party studio.

Furnished house.

And the Party Studio.

 A basic run down of how these sets work so I don't sound like a completely mad person for the rest of this post.
First there's the basic dollhouse. It's cute, the rooms are a little small and I wish the ceilings were higher but it was relatively cheap which makes it easier to deal with these issues. This comes with a doll and roughly half of the loungeroom furniture and accessories.
Next there's what they call "Welcome Packs." Each of these contain a doll and about half the furniture and accessoroes for a room. There's one for the bathroom, bedroom and kitchen but not the loungeroom because the loungeroom welcome pack is more or less what comes with the house.
Next there are "Decorator Packs." There's one of these for each room and they have the other half of the stuff for each room.
Then there are doll packs which is just a doll and two tiny accessories and lastly "Surprise Delivery" packs. Surprise delivery packs look like teeny shipping boxes and come with three random accessories. The three accessories will all be for the same room and usually related in some way eg. An egg, an eggcup and a saucepan.

Surprise Delivery egg and eggcup. . . not sure why the egg is green though

Each room has an animal theme. Bunnies for the bathroom, bears for the bedroom, puppies for the parlour and kitties for the kitchen. And ALL of the furniture and accessories have the faces of the animal of the room they belong to (and the ears and tails.) Apparently they're called "Petkins". The concept of petkins raises a lot of questions to my mind that probably I wouldn't wonder about if I was a kid but I'll get to that in a bit.
The Party Studio is an extension to the basic house and while Party Studio sounds pretty fancy, it's really just an extra bedroom and a dining room. It comes with a few pieces of furniture for each room and a staircase. I'm counting the staircase separately because it's not fixed in place. The extension can be slotted into place on either side of the house and the staircase can be attached to either side of the basic house or extension in the same way.

Basic house, staircase and Party studio

Anyway when the Party Studio appeared so did two new decorator packs (one for each room of course) and three new dolls.
The structures are well made and seem fairly sturdy and has cute details like power outlets in each room. I like the way you can connect them on either side rather than having one set layout you're stuck with forever. It bothers me a little how small the rooms in the base house are. The rooms in the Party Studio (I feel stupid and pretentious every time I say "Party Studio") are bigger even though there's less stuff to go in them. But the decorator packs and surprise delivery packs do come with small "floor tiles" that can be connected to the house to make the rooms bigger. Except the can only be connected to the ground floor at the sides and they look a little silly.

Power outlet

Every room has built in shelves and the ground floor room of the Party Studio has a little window that opens. The loungeroom has a cute aquarium - actually just a square of transparent blue plastic with fish and seaweed moulded into it. Along the roof of each structure is a strip of bunting and paper lanterns. The bunting has little faces - bunnies, puppies, kitties and birds.

Detail of the bunting. Third flag along is clearly a bird and clearly not a bear.

Since the first three animals are also the theme animals from three of the rooms in the base house this makes me wonder if perhaps the bedrooms bear theme was originally planned as a bird theme. So far there is no room with a bird theme.
Most of the little pieces of furniture and accessories are made of a slightly rubbery feeling plastic. The bunk bed from the sleepover bedroom is made of harder plastic and there may be more pieces that I can't think of off the top of my head. Ninety nine per cent of the furniture has little animal faces. Painted eyes, moulded painted ears, little raised muzzles with painted mouths and little moulded tails on the back. I have considered removing the paint and filing off the ears, tails and muzzles and repainting this furniture to be more realistic but that would be a LOT of work and I'm not sure I would prefer that. The little faces are cute and since the dolls and houses are quite cartoony they look pretty good together.

Petkin chair showing face and tail. I don't know that I'd be overly comfortable sitting in that chair.

The little dolls are cute. Even though their features are clearly copied from the larger Shopkins dolls, they're nowhere near as terrifying. They're adorable. The dolls are roughly 3 inches high but because of their moulded hair, the actual height varies from doll to doll. They have little rubbery removable dresses but I'm not sure how useful this really is. You see, their sleeves are painted on their arms, their shoes and socks are painted on their legs, and both are fairly outfit specific, so swapping their dresses looks a little weird. On top of that, the more hair the doll has, the harder it is to get her dress off or back on again. And frankly if I was a child, I would be far more likely to just swap their heads around if I wanted to change their clothes. Heck, I'm an adult and if I ever want to change their clothes, I'll just be swapping their heads.

These are the dolls that came with the Welcome Packs and house

More dolls. The pink eyes are a little creepy.

Even more dolls.

If you undress the dolls they look like they're in a Jane Fonda workout video.

And the three dolls that were released at the same time as the party studio.

And now on to my issues with these sets, or as I like to call them "Reasons to suspect Shopkins will be responsible when I finally go completely mad."

 1. The Sparkle Hill Happy home.
 I don't have this. I will never have this. The only place I've seen it for sale is the Walmart website. It's a variation on the basic house but with special holographic wallpaper and glitter through the paint. It even comes with special edition kitchen furniture which is all glittery. Yay. . . Except, wait a minute. The only way you can get half of the loungeroom furniture is packed with the ordinary basic house. So if you get this you either have to have an unfurnished lounge or buy the basic non-glittery house as well. On top of which the kitchen furniture it comes with is the furniture from the Welcome pack but all pink and glittery but this won't match the rest of the kitchen furniture. You'll have 1 glittery kitchen chair and one plain 1. This idea really bothers me.

What's more disturbing a toilet with a face or food with a face?

2. Petkins. So depending on how you look at it the idea of Petkins can be kind of disturbing. Everything had these little faces. The furniture, the food, the toilet, the toilet paper, the bath. . . Are they alive? Or are they just cute faces on things? I can deal with the idea of the cute faces but if they're alive? That's a whole different story. Firstly there's just the concept of how annoying it would be if all of your possessions were alive but then there are the more complicated concepts like do they eat? Do they poop? Do they breed? Because if they did that there's your whole day gone just feeding them and cleaning up their poop. And what do they eat? All the food in the house IS petkins! That's just gross. Furthermore, I'm not sure what would bother me more, a toilet and toilet paper that's alive or eating food that's alive, but I'm pretty sure both things would disturb me greatly.
3. Pictures from the Puppy Patio sets (which I haven't seen in person yet.) show that it has stuff to look after a dog. A kennel, a dog bowl, a dog bone. BUT there's no dog in sight! Sooooo either this stuff is to look after an imaginary dog OR the puppy petkins. If it's the petkins, then this house is pretty underprepared to look after all the other damn animals in it and also Yay! 

The puppy petkins get to eat dog treats that ARE puppy petkins! That's not creepy or cannibalistic at all.

How many different coloured TVs does a shopkin really need?

4. A LOT of the stuff you get in the Surprise Delivery packs are just recolours of stuff that was in the furniture packs. While I'm all for having choice, getting something new is WAY more fun than getting ANOTHER television in a different colour.

Riana Radio and her accessory that's . . . not a radio

5. Riana Radio. One of the individual dolls is named Riana Radio. Until I opened her box I thought her accessory was a little kids karaoke machine and microphone. Nope. It's a diary and a pen. Why?!  Why would you name a doll Radio unless her accessory was somehow to do with music?! The others make sense. Spaghetti Sue is cooking spaghetti. Sarah Sushi has a bento box of sushi. Melodine is playing piano. But there's no logical connection between the name Riana Radio and a diary.
6.And this is going to make me sound like a huge whiney baby and I don't care.
There's a whole new set of Happy Places stuff that's been released. A games room and laundry extension, a backyard and pool extension, and a heap of dolls and furniture packs to go with them. I've been seeing them all over Instagram since Christmas. It appears these sets are available EVERYWHERE.  . . except Australia. The fact that I could walk to Moose head office (I wouldn't because it would take about 3 hours and I have shit to do, but I COULD if I really needed to) for some reason makes this more annoying. I want to see the new sets. Especially the pool and garden stuff. I want to see the little catalogue that shows all the new stuff. I especially want to know if the rumours are true and some of the new accessories are indeed a poop scooper and poop because that is so terrible it's hilarious. But none of the new stuff has shown up anywhere yet.

In all fairness I finished writing this last Friday and have been waiting to take pictures and since then the new stuff has shown up in our local shops. Probably expect to hear about it soonish (unless our internet goes out again in which case close to soonish.)