Saturday Gift Post--New Arrivals, Including Puppets, Purses, and Kawaii Cards, Crawl In.

I mentioned that on my trip to Atlanta, I was quite aware of empty spinners and displays, so on my return to Milwaukee, I was glad to see that several of my post-Christmas orders had showed up.

We picked up a new card line, Magnination, which is in the style of kawaii, or those Japanese-ish animorphic stuff drawings with Wilma Flintstone and Barney Rubble faces. By that, I mean dots for eyes, as opposed to the dot within the circle of Fred Flintstone. There are about a dozen designs altogether--it's letterpress with up to five color runs, so the cards ain't cheap at $4.95, but they are so gosh-darn charming that I'd easily argue their worth.

One of our toy vendors came in with some new product, and we all quickly took to these sock monkey purses. The zipper is on the mouth, no less. We also brought in the baby sock monkeys again, though this time, only the brown ones.

I don't know what I was thinking, weather-wise, but we also got in some very cute sock monkey umbrellas. I guess those are going out in March.

And finally, we picked up some new Folkmanis puppets. In addition to stocking up for Easter (they make pretty adorable bunnies), I brought in some extra of the new robins to decorate our spring is coming table, which ineveitably goes up in February.

One bookseller noted that she didn't think this piggy was particularly cute, but having just seen the Project Runway episode with Miss Piggy, I think all this porcine puppet needs is some designer duds.

Come to think of it, both the sock monkey and the piggy also have Barney Rubble eyes. Maybe Kim Carnes could sing about that.