VINTAGE! 80s Plastic Charms

I must first admit that I cannot remember if these were capsule toys or not. It seems like they should have been, perfect in size, quality and function. But I cannot with confidence say that they were. I am sure they were toys for change though! So they count here!

I had forgotten about the plastic charms from my eighties childhood until watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off for the two hundredth time and noticing the pile of charms by Sloane Peterson's answering machine.

John bought me a big bunch of these for Christmas, finding them on ebay and girlprops.com. He is a sweetheart for doing some serious research.

I spent some time looking around for any actual information about these charms but found little. John managed to uncover some aliases...such as "bell charms." "80s plastic charms", "vintage 80s charms", or another combination of the words "plastic", "vintage", "charms" or "eighties" seems to do the trick. And you end up with many a blog post either wishing for the return of these childhood favorites or lamenting the loss of a particular charm.

My post is definitely intended to solicit a "wow, I remember those" response. And to rub it in that I now have a massive quantity in my possession.

Nendoroids

This post isn't about a toy I bought, but instead a whole slew of toys that I desperately want. Nendoroids! These tiny cuties are Japanese toys with exaggerated proportions that make them short, round and incredibly adorable. I especially like all of the yelling and pointing that these little girls can be seen doing. (There are boys too, but I (almost) always like the girl toys better. Below is an example of a nendoroid that you can find on the website www.1999.co.jp/eng.

I am a big fan of this site. I have purchased toys here in the past, and it is quite nice that they do the currency conversion as you browse and offer a plethora of options...not such a user-friendly site, but definitely a functional one.

One of the cool things about these toys is one of the things I most love about Japanese toys (and all good toys, really). They are really well made! Fun to play with because they come with interchangeable heads, hands, and other parts that express a range of emotions and gestures.

I am in love with the super deformed (SD) style anyway and so nendoroids were made for me! (If you don't know what SD is, check it out on the Anime News Network!!)

Here is a ridiculous (but kind of fun) video that someone made about their recent nendoroid acquisitions. It is exactly what I would end up with if I tried to make a one-minute stop-motion animation video.

Cutie, cutie monsters!

Well, I am just a blogging deadbeat. In my defense, I have been transitioning jobs and dealing with holiday stuff, so give me a break, will ya?!?

Now down to the serious business of my toy bloggin'. Thanks to a generous reader, I am now the proud owner of a new set of Cutie Monsters! If you will recall, I blogged about these toys being on my wish list of bulk buys back in October. I coveted them and declared they were among the best capsule toys out there. And I was right! Check them out.

Aren't they delightful? They are remarkably well molded and painted. Looking at individual pieces of the same color and style variant reveals some minor differences in paint details, but nothing like the horrible little monkeys I recently blogged about.

These toys are cute, clever and well made. If you come across them in a vending machine you should empty your pockets.