Dear Mini: With These Teddies, You Are Taking the Piss.

This is kind of a post for Mini, but as I'm kind like that, I thought I'd share it with you all readers. Think of it as a support group for parent's afflicted with bears as I am.

No, these are not my bears, they are Mini's bears. There are fecking loads of the buggers. Or to be specific, its not just teddy bears. We have Hello Kitty. We have Beanie Bears. We have soft bodied dolls.

She has also stolen my childhood bear, Mrs Ted. As well as the three Mothers Day bears she has picked, supposedly for me, but which were pinched within five minutes of being handed over.

It takes me 20 minutes to remove and replace said Bed Bears (as this is just the bears etc on there, I'm not even sure how many are in the toy box under her bed, along with various variations of Barbie, Monster High and Bratz). If I fail to put them back in their "section" (I kid you not), she knows and moans at you whilst removing them to put them back.

Yes, they have categories and sections.

We have the Hello Kitty section. The Cat section. The Teddy White Family (not a section and sounding like a minor furry version of the mafia).

The one that makes me laugh the most is a recent variation. She got around £10 in birthday money, and a few days after, we popped into one of our local second hand shops. It was there that she spotted something she has coveted, and pleaded for, for months.

A Baby Oleg from Compare the Meerkat.

At one point, when we didn't have transport, she tried to explain why it was perfectly reasonable for me to make up a car to purchase Insurance for simply so she could get a Baby Oleg. She saw no reason why this was completely ridiculous.

Seeing a brand spanking new one, in its box for £4 when she had £10 of her own made her jump up and down with glee.

However, this has started the newest "section" down to Oleg's cot/box. The "Under ones" section.

Just a small selection of the bears.......

Included with Oleg is a George Pig, a Me to You Bear with her initial, amongst other little bears. They must stay in their box and they go every where with her indoors.  

I know later I will get told off as I changed her bedding. And I accidentally managed to knock the buggers out the box and I have no idea what bears go in bar Oleg and George.

So, despite me putting clean bedding on, that is new One Direction set, and I've put all the books back on the shelf that Littlest knocked off, she will not notice that, she will notice the bears being  in the wrong place.






How long does this bear nonsense last?  The only bears I had on my bed were the aforementioned Mrs Ted (a mothercare bear given to me a day after my birth in 1982), an orange bear I think I was given by a cousin and have no idea what happened to, and Roland Rat.

Littlest is just as mad about dogs.

Save me from the scourge of bears.

One more bear and neither child will fit in their bloody beds, and if they think they're pitching up in mine, they can take their bears and sleep in the shed.

These are all the ones she wanted to take to her Aunts for ONE NIGHT!

Littlest and his Dog collection. Ridiculous

I think I may need to slyly lose some of the furry critters, especially as Boot Fair season is upon us and will no doubt bring in another influx.

No more bears. Just no. Or dogs. Or Hello Kittys. Enough children!

(Looks shiftily at the enormous pile of records I bought in the last two days and denies all knowledge of hoarding responsibility).

After the Top 100 Toys- How Could They Forget...?

Hey all.


Sorry have been a bit quiet, have had a bit of a cold for about two weeks which, despite attempts to try every over the counter remedy available in Boots would not go. 


In the end, on Friday, it manifested itself into possibly the worst Flu I have ever, ever had. I literally felt like I was dying. In the end it took until late Sunday to start to feel slightly human again, and not before I had lost a whole stone in weight (really, a whole stone) due to my inability to eat, and the amount of germs I sweated out. 


We all had it too- Littlest had to have the Doc visit him Friday as I was so worried (which due to his lungs means I always worry more), and Elder was sick too. Mini went to her Christmas party at playschool, and both Elder and I took it in turns to get her there and back so she didn't miss it, but I had a hotwater bottle hidden up my coat in the back of a cab! Then Saturday she was sick as well. Elder was then stuck in the town centre for five hours trying to do shopping, due to snow and lack of cabs and buses.


So, flu jabs all round next year!


Anyway, after feeling a bit better last night, I watched The 100 Greatest Children's Toys countdown on Channel 4. I'm a bit of a big kid at heart, so wanted to see what in the list I remembered.


What kind of surprised me was the amount of games consoles that made it into the list, especially the top ten. 


I don't own a console. Not one. I would like one- some of the dance and sing games on the Wii or the new Kinnect do peak my interest and I've heard that people have had great results from the Wii Fit.


But are they really toys? 


And when we have a generation of children with perhaps the fittest digits but the unhealthiest and under exercised everything else, is this a good thing? 


When I was a child we had an Atari console, in fact I wish I had one now, (sadly they cost silly amounts now, whereas I recall you could pick them up for pennies in the early nineties when Sega and Nintendo took off). But this was rationed, it was never set up in either of our bedrooms, and was very much the property of the parents. We also had a Dragon 32 computer too, which you could play games on. Except you had to write them on to the computers green screen first and put them onto tape- get one piece of code wrong and regardless of hours of RSI inducing work the whole thing would delete and you'd need to start again. 


The majority of the time was spent playing board games, or making up elaborate tales for my Barbie's, Sindy's and Jem doll. Or reading actual books. Or playing Spirograph. You know stuff that required effort.


So, there were a couple of toys which were my favourite as a kid, which we played come sun, rain or snow, which didn't come up on the list.


See how many you remember:


The Fashion Wheel.


Between the age of possibly 7 and 10 I was going to be a dancing fashion designer. And it was all thanks to the Fashion Wheel.

The Fashion Wheel was genius. It was basically a large Plastic disk, which you plonked a piece of paper on, and with a few twists you could select a fashion design for your model. You then closed the paper down using the lever, and then rubbed over the paper with a black rubber thing, which transferred, rather like leaf rubbing, a picture of the fashion you had picked.


You then removed the image, and could colour it in, or you could add texture (in 2D obviously) from another part of the wheel.


She had different hair styles, trousers, dresses and tops and skirts. I abandoned my Barbie for it. The Fashion Wheel. I loved it so much, and had whole pin boards full of it . 


However I do partly blame the Fashion Wheel for my sisters love in her early teens for nicking my clothes and cutting them to bits to re-design them. 


The Skip-it


Oh yes, in the 70s, Clackers (which made it to the list) could cause you broken wrists (If Blue Peter was to be believed). In the late 80s/early 90s it was your ankles which could send you to A and E due to the Skip-it.

The Skip-It was a large, hard plastic ball, attached to a plastic rope, which had a hoop on the end you fitted your ankle through. Then you got momentum going enough to make it go round and jumped over it. That's it.


Another inexplicably crap and dangerous toy, which I loved, and which I do believe my ankles are still suffering due to years of using.


And just like all the fad toys, there were even more dangerous Market knock off versions, which is where I was bought one from, and which the ball was even harder. (It was purple. And glittery) I once saw one of these things fly off the end and smack a dinner lady square in the face. Did we stop using them- no! We all probably had a Skip -It ankle which remains stronger than the other even now! 


God Bless it, you really worked up a sweat with it. 


The Lo-Lo Ball


Whoever invented this obviously didn't think the Skip-It was quite dangerous enough for under tens.


The Lo-Lo Ball could induce full body casts being necessary and was the only toy to be banned by my Primary School while I was there. But did we put down this football with its slippery plastic disc? NO! We just played it at home!


The idea of the Lo-Lo Ball was that you got your feet on the disc (not easy, you had to find a bike or person to hold onto) then squeezed them into the ball in the centre, and jumped. Again, simple.

But my could you mess yourself up falling off one. And that was the easiest part of the Lo-Lo Ball. I do recall that back then, Play Grounds and parks didn't have all that nice soft stuff on them they have now, which basically springs the child back up if they fall. It was gravel play grounds and that stuff stuck in your hands, knees or whichever part of you hit it, whether with force or otherwise. But did we give up, well, no we loved the Lo-Lo Ball. 


We had to share one between my sister and I, it had a fluorescent green disc and orange ball, and we argued over whose go it was for quite a number of holidays and weekends. If one burst mid bounce, well, that was you in an Ambulance. But again, it was something that no amount of miss adventure would dull the appeal of. I'm quite surprised they are still on sale now.


I'm half tempted to buy one!


So, what toys would make your list?

Why I Really Do NOT Like Channel 617.

Channel 617. Grrr.


Mini, at the grand old age of 3 and a half, has decided that she has outgrown CBeebies. In my view she's not so much out grown it as seen every episode of every show on there at least 30 times, so is bored. 


Littlest (still known as Not Boy at home) is not impressed. We know that his level of feeling is this, because in-between bouts of no, not and mine, he stares mournfully at the TV set, saying "Beebies Gone". And to his cars. And to Mini's Baby Annabel who he appears to have adopted.


But no, Mini is the Queen of our home (seriously) so we now have a new menace channel to contend with.


Tiny Pop.


I have no idea how it came to her attention, however, she refuses to watch anything else now. But in my view there are two very definite reasons why its worse than CBeebies (apart from the bonus that it doesn't have an over grown Sarah Jane Honeywell jumping about like a hyperactive 5 year old after downing several bottles of pop).


Firstly the programmes. They look like the kind of shows which at some point were offered to the BBC, but were deemed too, well, crap to be shown on CBeebies. 


Rolie Polie Olie springs to mind, which looks like it has been programmed (yes programmed is the only describing word I could think of) by the same bunch who made the video for Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" in 1985, using a Dragon 32 PC. (see below if you don't believe me)


It looks like technological advances never happened! These guys have obviously never seen Toy Story, Shrek or Ice Age. 








Or like Captain Mack, Mini's undisputed favourite thus far. She loves it, finds it hilariously funny, knows the theme song and the catchphrase. That's devotion for you. 


For me, its possibly the naffest kids TV ever. 


The costumes look like the type you'd see worn by hen night guests in Brighton for a weekend drinking session.  It is so crass its unbelievable, I actually think the reason it appeals to kids is because it was written by a child pretending to be an adult like the kid off the loo roll adverts. The actors are so poor they would be rejected by Hollyoak's casting directors.


But Mini loves it all. 


The second, and by far worst reason though- ADVERTS, stacks of adverts.


But not any old Tesco or similar ads, oh no. 


In an ad break, there is just two or three minutes of TOYS, stacks of toys. 


And if you're a parent, you know what that means.


"I want that, I want that, Can I have that, Mummy I want it NOW!"


Yes, so in conclusion. Tiny Pop, an evil, crass, cheap and advert driven channel, designed to rid you not just of the brain cells not already zapped by other kids programming, but to render you poor too.


Maybe its the work of the Conservatives?