Transformers Revenge of the Fallen

I admit, my testosterone levels are significantly lower than they should be for a true appreciation of the finer points of this "film". But I really have not felt so insulted by a movie in a long long time. I enjoyed the first Transformer movie. It does not have to be a monumental work of art for me to appreciate the pure escapist entertainment value of an action flick. Revenge of the Fallen followed such a contrived formula of shoot or blow up everything on the screen, place as many marketable pieces of merch as possible, hot girls doing ridiculous poses on motorcycles, and schmarmy pablum theme music that I think I would have been doubly offended if I was a man. The girls are amazing. Really, but you can get that in a calender. The plot was predictable which is fine for a children's movie, but the way they are selling this movie with violence, sex, and dry humping leads me to think the audience they are going for is older if not more sophisticated than the five year old set who would be awed by the plot and effects. Hasbro also has the GI Joe movie coming up which I was interested to see, but based on Revenge of the Fallen I think I'll pass. And now they are working on a Monopoly movie? Really?

Wanna Duel?....Poke'mon tournaments return!

Wanna duel? Soon these words will be heard all over hopscotch on Thursday afternoons. There will be no swords, no knights, just wild eyed youngsters flashing decks of Pokemon cards and speaking in a language that involves hit points, Pikachu, Squirtle, Energy, and many other terms that leave parents shaking their heads and happily checking them at the door. hopscotch has held Poke'mon tournaments in the past, and are very excited to be starting them up again for summer entertainment. Most parents know Poke'mon as the cartoon show, and the card packs that their children beg them to buy just so they can leave the precious things lying all over the floor. Those are the only negative aspects of this brilliantly sophisticated card game. In an era when young men crave the intense action that seems to be found only in video games, they are completely excited by Poke'mon. A card game that uses basic math and reading skills over and over and over. A game that allows 8 year olds to approach and interact with 12 year olds on an even playing field. A game that allows kids who are not athletically inclined to excel at something competitive. A game! A face to face game that demands interaction, the honing of interpersonal skills, and clever quips (smattered with a plethora of farting jokes).
When my son was younger and playing Poke'mon he made an interesting and rather compelling case that Poke'mon was a more sophisticated game of strategy than chess. As a mother to many (my own notwithstanding) I love Poke'mon tournaments because it gives these guys a place to hang out and get a little guidance from good solid adults besides their parents. They become quite attached to the process of getting mock scolded for the amount of soda they consume, and the need to trim their finger nails. The kids from some of my first Poke'mon matches have graduated from high school now, but they continue to come by the store and check in on me and proudly display their extra super big slurps (or lack thereof) proudly. I'm happy to see them, love them up a bit and send them on their way, but it's time for a new batch. Wanna duel?

the hopscotch and ASTRA story...

I jumped into this toy thing blind. I honestly loved McMinnville too much to let a great toy store close up. I knew NOTHING. But, I had been a conscientious consumer. I shopped specialty. I knew the name that would save me, I just didn't know that it would. That name was ASTRA. The American Specialty Toy Retailers Association. Every year I go to conference to get new ideas for improving my business and being a stronger positive force in my community. I just got back from this years St. Paul MN. Conference last night. I feel more inspired than ever. I was able to talk and listen to folks who have been in the industry for decades and generations. People who make toys, people who distribute toys, people who sell toys, and the wealth of their knowledge is invaluable to me. I have formed friendships that will last a lifetime. Every year I meet some new brilliant people who make me look at things anew. I found and ordered lots of exciting new toys, of course, those innovators just don't stop. I'll be sure to keep you posted as they roll in, but for now, I want to say watch for changes. Upgrades. Investments.... A regular blog ;-)

Webkinz ExravagannnZA!

We hosted a Webkinz Extravaganza event this weekend. Since it was our first one, we were a little nervous. We had heard that these events could be out of control and crazy busy with Webkinz enthusiasts all over the store. This information had come from customers who had attended Webkinz events in past years at other stores as well as other store owners. We decided to spread the event over three days so we did not get mobbed. Let me just say on this side of things that having the Extravaganza event was worth the effort just to hear all of those wee ones say “ExtravagannnnnZA!”
To participate we had to buy a kit from the Webkinz guys that had all of those cool Extravaganza Webkinz, the posters, some of the prize goodies. The kit has the same number of Extravaganza pets for each store whether you live in a town the size of Portland or Carlton, so we still have lots of those left, and we are selling them for a dollar while supplies last with any Webkinz purchase of $15 or more. Ganz doesn’t tell you what kind of events to host though, so we just kind of had to wing it. We decided to try to emulate the online aspect of playing with your Webkinz in life sized events. We did a wishing well, and a jellybean challenge, and a Wheel of Wow. We hosted a coloring contest and a Kinz Style Costume Contest.
For the wishing well the kids had tiles that I put fruit stickers on one side of and stars on the other side. They had to line the tiles up in three rows of three. I had done up fifteen tiles so there were plenty to pull from for variety. I also put a wild card in that was a star on either side to increase their chances of winning. Yeah, I know, it feels like low level gambling to me also, but they did not seem to worry an instant about the slippery slope they were on and they were nearly guaranteed a win, so game on!
For the Jellybean challenge I filled a jar with jellybeans and issued each child a coupon with their registration that had room for their name, phone number, and guess, and they were able to put it in a jar to be considered. Almost a guarantee that if the child was under five, the guess was going to be 100, because there were a lot of jellybeans in that jar, and 100 is a LOT. Don got one little girl who wanted to count them though. Fortunately for Don, she could only count to fifty. Unfortunately for her, that meant there were fifty jellybeans in the jar. She counted them twice. Don tried to get her to go higher, but she was pretty adamant. It was fun really to see the kids stick to their guns when their parents were trying to give them some help with estimation, mathematical averages, etc. Loved the families where the child would come up, make some rash “100!” type of guess and one of the parents would want to do it for the….I mean “help” them, while the other parent was holding them back with admonitions of “let them do it themselves” .
Our grand total, BTW, was 769. We actually had a tie with two guesses at 750.
For the wheel of wow, I borrowed an old roulette type wheel from friends out in Willamina (thanks Matt and Joi!!) and stuck prizes all around the rim. There was one slot of win a Webkinz of your choice, several slots of win an Extravaganza Webkin, bookmarks, trading cards, lipgloss, perfume, etc. pretty self explanatory. You spin the wheel, you get a prize. All of this winning is bound to turn the lot of them into gambling addicts before they get into high school.
Most kids arrived without a really good idea of what they were there for, so we had art supplies on hand so they could enter the drawing contest. Oh my gosh! When I grow up I want to have an art gallery for the twelve and under set. It is such an awesome art form. They were all great. Don is scanning and posting the images onto our website so they can have the real pictures back. And of course, every child was a winner. There were varying degrees of winning based on effort and talent, but I’m sure this was the first time that most of these kids had entered a contest of any kind, so we wanted to encourage them to keep on participating.
Those that did know what was going on brought their Webkinz all dressed up for the Style Kinz Costume Contest. These were some well loved little plushies. We had every kind of Webkin with every kind of costume imaginable, and my descriptions could not do them justice, so check them out in our photo gallery on the hopscotch website. Too cute. One boy made an Indiana Jones costume for his Polar bear out of brown paper bag. He made the hat, the messenger bag, everything. Very cool. Another little girl turned a princess crown into a saddle for her horse. I said I wouldn’t try to describe them didn’t I? These kids were inventive!!
It was a crazy busy weekend. Sales were good at the store, and the energy popped. Having kids that excited about anything is just so much fun. They twinkle from their Saturday morning bed head to their tippy tippy toes. I am pleased to be living my life in such close proximity to that kind of energy.

First Birthdays.

My niece Adeline turned one yesterday. She is the thirteenth child born to my siblings and me. You would think we'd get tired of it, but we just eat them up each and everyone.

Adeline is particularly delectable as she is a red headed fair skinned butterball, and the first child of the youngest of the siblings who happens to be the only boy in the family. We've never been slackers when it comes to taking care of the babies in our family, but this girl has us all wrapped around her little finger. The fact that we are all done having our own children I'm sure contributes to our complete devotion. So what to get for the girl who has everything, and more than she needs coming her way on her first birthday? It was an interesting question I posed to myself walking through hopscotch on Saturday. Whenever a customer needs a first birthday gift I commiserate with the importance of choosing the right item for this very important day. Something that will stay around, make a lasting impact on the childhood it is meant to facilitate. I always gravitate to wood toys, push toys for the soon to be walker, things that will be around for the next generation, first building blocks, cobblers benches, classics, staples. How surprised I was to find that that was not at all what I wanted for my little Adeline. I wanted to give her something that would give her enjoyment NOW, not be a keepsake for later on. I wanted to shape her day to day one year old existence. I was particularly interested in shaping the experience that her parents have. I haven't shopped for a one year old for almost six years. I was so surprised at what I chose. I know it sounds a little silly, but I wanted to choose gifts that would stack into a tidy pyramid. I love the look of a big box stacked up to a small box. Being a toy store owner I could hardly get away with just one gift, and a pyramid allowed many to be presented as one. The day before my children and I had been tooling around downtown McMinnville popping into our favorite shops, one of which is Third Street Books. My daughter found this groovy pop up cat book. It was a board book, very durable, lots of activities, squeakers, sliders, fuzzy patches to pet, etc. Adeline is obsessed with cats. It was perfect. The next day I pulled a Twilight Turtle off the shelf. It is a light up toy that casts the constellations on the ceiling of your room. It is beautifully designed, the turtle is plush, the shell is acrylic, and the colors are muted neutral greens. My brother and his wife Jessica (like all new parents) need anything that will help Adeline sleep on her own, particularly during the first few hours of the night time which they could actually use to catch up with each other. The package was bigger than the book, so it would stack perfectly. Next, I had heard Jessica say that Adeline needed a new pair of Robeez shoes. What better for a new walker than a hip adorable version of the tried and true moccasin? They can feel the floor through the thin leather sole, but their feet are protected and comfortable. I chose a chocolate brown pair with pink flowers. To go with the little shoes, I selected a Boo-boo bunny which is a plastic ice cube that goes in the freezer until the melon takes a hit, then you pull it out and put it in this little stuffed rabbit that can be placed on the ouchie spot without drips, towels, frost bite, etc. That first year, the melon takes a lot of hits. I thought I was done with my selections when a customer brought a darling puppet to the counter. Puppets! They love puppets at that age. But I needed to choose one that was between the size of the Robeez and the Boo-boo bunny so my pyramid would stack nicely. I chose an Elephant hand puppet from Manhattan based on that criteria. The result is the mountain in the first photo.
I went to a St. Patrick's day party after the one year old party. I was talking to a guy who expressed condolences that I had had to attend a one year party. He then ran through the entire itinerary of the party I had just attended. Baby gets dressed up to look cute, baby gets passed around as guests arrive, most guests more interested in beer or wine than in baby, some guests won't leave baby alone for a second, baby gets plopped in high chair with cake, baby fails to understand that baby needs to REALLY get messy with cake, some assistance, some demonstration, baby gets the idea, and gets thoroughly covered in frosting, flashes go off, presents are opened, and everyone clears out at warp speed to try to salvage some of their Saturday. Baby has a complete overstimulated, sugar let down crash and burn.
My brother and his wife were not going to have a party, but the protest from friends was so great that they felt that they probably should. In spite of the contrived aspects, all set up for photo ops, I really feel good about celebrating the first year of a child's life. Three lives are created anew with the first child. Nothing is the same for anyone, and that bears formal acknowledgment, mourning, and celebration. We could probably ditch the messy cake era. I wonder what new ritual could take the place of the messy first birthday cake?

The Carousel at Albany

In Albany Oregon they are building a carousel from scratch. Not reassembling, not refurbishing, and not skimping on any of the extras that are essential to creating a work of art of this magnitude. There will be a menagerie of animals, with 52 animals and 2 chariots, all hand carved and hand painted in the traditional style of Gustav Dentzel. The group was gifted the guts of a carousel by Dentzels descendants. The work is being done primarily by volunteers. The day we went by there were retired engineers, cabinet makers, and artists of all kinds. It is a painstaking process. There are renderings of all of the animals hanging from the walls. These renderings were drawn up by Terryl Whitlatch, who has worked with Star Wars’ George Lucas, and Kurt Christensen (artist and graphic designer. These sketchings are based on the desires of the individuals that have sponsored the carousel animal. for instance, there was this wonderful frog in bloomers crouched down mid-hop with a jar of flies under one arm. Her purple bonnet was blown back in the wind, and on her bottom was the word Sugar. The frogs name was Harriette. Harriette was designed in honor of the sponsors grandmother who lived through the great depression, loved frogs, canning, and purple, and had made clothing from sugar and flour sacks. Each of the animals has that kind of story to tell, and there is a book in which you can read all of them. So in front of these renderings, there are big blocks of wood. Some are just that with words like leg, tail, etc. written on them in sharpy. Some are being chiseled while we watch, some are being sanded, and some are being painted. A few are actually finished, and they sit in the foyer where the children are encouraged to climb up and sit on their backs. It's such a wonderful opportunity to see this work in progress. The smells of the workshop, the feel of the wood as it goes from a rough block to a shiny colorful carousel animal. There are many opportunities in this world to ride a carousel, but I don't imagine many to see one being created. You should check it out. While you're there, just up the street is a little toy store called Frogs and Pollywogs. A friend of mine named Celia owns it. She is the one who told me about the carousel project in the first place. Pop in and tell her I sent you.

A space of our own

It's finally time for the chicken house that I built for chickens to become Rowan's club house. We had chickens, then it was Zoe's play house. She drug all sorts of oddments out there to rot in the Oregon damp. She would play for a week, then abandon and leave many blankets, pillows and towels behind to be populated by the mildew and mold that abounds here. Finally it was abandoned for too long, and her older brother decided he should take it over. I can't recall if there was an exchange of money or favors for this transaction, or if she just let him have it. Devon has had many forts of his own. We lived on 80 acres in Oklahoma and he had two of the coolest forts ever there. He has built forts up in the tops of the arborvitae hedge that we have now. More like a cat walk really along the top of the hedge for about fifteen feet. This time he wanted a place of his own down at ground level. What the heck, Zoe wasn't using it anymore, why not? I'll tell you why not. Because the things that an eleven year old does in a place of his own, and the things that a sixteen year old does in a place of his own are two entirely different things. Devon had that place of his own for about eight months. He and some buddies carried a couch that was out on the street about 3/4 of a mile to furnish the thing. They spent a long wonderful summer out there on that couch in that fort. A summer that I am sure they will remember for the rest of their lives. But, when the weather changed, they continued to want to hang out there. It just did not seem like a good idea and it was becoming more and more obvious that the "He man woman haters club" was not what we had going on in our back yard. That spring, we ordered some chicks from the feed store, and moved Devon out. The chicks had lost all of their downy fluff, and grown to full grown, but were not yet laying when we acquired a Jack Russell terrier. Jack was a very naughty dog. We have no chickens. Our daughter is now vegetarian. Somehow, we still have the dog. It's a long story. The chicken/ play house has sat vacant since that time. Now it's Rowans turn. He and I spent the afternoon out there cleaning it up and getting it ready for the conversion. We got rid of all of the Zoe, and Devon, and chicken. We tore off the addition that Devon had added to the chicken house, and plan to put on a more sturdy addition of our own. Rowan wants windows, and he was talking about dry wall. We'll see what he gets when all is said and done. It's the dreaming and planning that give us the real pleasure. When you get the things you want, you replace the dreams with reality, and reality is never quite as good as the dream. So, Rowan is dreaming, and we are waiting for better weather to come around again (it will someday I'm certain!)I'm pretty sure that every child dreams of and plans an elaborate play house, (or perhaps a very simple one, but mine were always elaborate)and as we become adults very little in that changes. I still remember as a small child watching my dad design his dream house on graph paper. He took very little time off of work, but I remember him spending hours on that one particular dream. He never realized it, but it sure did give him pleasure to plan. We all need a place of our own, a quiet corner to plan our life's escapade. We sell a lot of play house tents, tunnels and tubes at hopscotch. Pop up places for children to enjoy their own space at the youngest of ages. Rowan was not down with that option as good as it sounded to me. Last year, the rocket ship by bazoongi was enough. This year we are building our own. From scratch. With wood, and nails and saws. And time, that of course is the biggest commodity of childhood. Plenty of that.