Toys

Christmas Shopping this weekend? How about adopting a walrus?

Remember this post from last year? You can “adopt” a walrus from the WWF. For a small donation you get a really nice stuffed walrus, a certificate and the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping the World Widlife Fund in their efforts to preserve endagered and threatened species like (unfortunately) the Walrus.

Here’s a link to the original post with the full info.

Walrus Mutant Pirate!

OK, that’s a phrase I didn’t think I’d be using as a headline… Here’s an interesting walrus figure, from French toy Company Papo, the Mutant Walrus Pirate. This is pretty much guaranteed to give small kids nightmares! But would be great fun to play with, when you just HAVE to have the ultimate action figure menace.

Papo toys are usually available at specialty toy stores, and now our local Fred Meyer has them – they’re probably also at Toys R Us and maybe Target? The offer a full line of knights, fantasy figures and pirates as well as LOTS of different animals, but oddly – not a walrus! I have a Papo-style walrus figure sitting on top of my bookshelf stereo on my dresser – I thought it was Papo until I hit their website and can find no walrus in their product line. Now I wonder who makes it?

Here’s the full collection of Papo figurines from their website:
http://www.papo-france.com/Collection.asp

All I Want for Christmas is to Adopt a Walrus!

The World Wildlife Fund has what I think will be the perfect Christmas present for me this year. It’s the Walrus Adoption Kit!

Drifting slowly on ice floes through the Arctic waters of Canada, Alaska, northeast Russia, and Greenland, the walrus is easily recognized by its massive size and impressive tusks. With Arctic ice melting due to warmer temperatures, the walrus is losing its primary habitat for resting, birthing, nursing calves, and protecting itself from predators.

Each symbolic adoption kit includes a:

  • high-quality wildlife plush.
  • reusable gift bag, made from recycled plastic.
  • personalized adoption certificate.
  • letter that identifies you as the gift-giver.
  • details on the work that your gift will help support.

There are 3 levels, $100, $50 and $25. Not all of the amount is deductible since you get the cute stuffed walrus, but helping the walrus is not about the tax deductions. This time is definitely making it onto the list of great walrus-related Christmas gifts, which is a future post I’m putting the finishing touches on for the near future. Until then, go buy one for the walrus-lover on your Christmas or Holiday list.

Here’s the link: Adopt a walrus kit from World Wildlife Fund

Turns out the Walrus was Paul, after all.

So last night my son and I were at his school carnival, which is a crazy, far-too-crowded affair at which every kid in the school and their parents and scored of other people all jam themselves into the elementary school gym and play carnival games in order to win candy and donated stuffed animals. My son was frantically searching for any donated Pokemon plush, but at this one game we found a true score as he won a walrus! This is an “official” picture, the one we won doesn’t have the “Ty” tag, but he does have a small label reading “Paul”. I chuckled at the joke, saying to my 9 year old son, “Turns out Paul was the walrus after all”. Of course he had no idea what I was talking about.

I don’t know anything about Beanie Babies – my sum total of knowledge would be just an awareness of the crazy antics surrounding them when they were popular. I’ve never had any, or course, and they were “over” long before my son was on the scene. I thought that the Beatles reference on the label was just a sly in-joke, until I looked up Paul the Walrus on Amazon. That’s when I found out that it was not so much a sly reference to the Beatles, as a full-on exploitation of the whole Walrus/Beatles thing. I guess every Beanie Baby has a poem, and Paul’s is:

Traveling the ocean in a submarine
Singing and playing a tambourine
One day hoping to lead a band
First he needs to find dry land!

The description goes on to describe another Beanie Baby called “Ringo the Raccoon” and this is where I decide to stop investigating before I find out what they’ve done to John.

http://www.amazon.com/Ty-Beanies-Babies-Paul-Walrus/dp/B00000JTER