Every time I’m browsing the toy floor of the big Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara, I’m stopped in my tracks by the plastic animal display. Can you imagine some small Japanese child begging their parental unit for…the prehistoric stuff of nightmares?
Or a squeamishly realistic octopus?
Japanese children must have way more imagination than I did, if their their Barbies have to fend off a pack of warthogs…
or rampaging tapirs…
or even (the most frightening of all) a herd of satanic goats
I admit that I have tried and failed to come up with a scenario in which a kid might need a turkey to complete his or her sandbox fantasy…
although some parent somewhere has been saved from their child holding a grudge far into adulthood because they came home with a Haliaeetus leucocephalus, not a Pithecophaga jefferyi.
The other thing that always puzzles me is that despite the overly-fierce depiction of some animals, there’s an odd tendency toward derpiness in others.
I mean, good luck getting picked for the lead in the school play if you’re a Scottish Fold
or a lemur
And then there are the toy questions which may never be answered…
Is there really a market for such a disturbing variety of cows?
And how many kids have THESE on their Xmas list?
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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had
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