I didn’t expect such a big response when I asked readers to send in photos of their childhood “plushies.” And even after the first post, featuring a dozen bears, turtles, and so on, I continue to receive them. I attribute this to the “Madeleine Effect,” expressed by the equation “Bear = Memories.”
So, in lieu of “Readers’ wildlife photos” today, here’s installment #3 of “Readers’ plushies.”
Reader Alex has a bear in surprisingly good condition:
Big Bear has been with me since my birthday in 1969. There is some sort of mechanical device inside Big Bear that gives off a “baaaaah” sound when he is turned upside down – and it still works perfectly. Big Bear is likely in such pristine shape because of the unselfish sacrifice of Wa-wa, another bear (not pictured) who was chewed upon incessantly.Big Bear now sits in my daughters’ room watching over them.
Reader Leo sends a bonus: a toy and a cat:
These are Druil and Druil, two of our domestic animals. Druil on the right is a dog. He has been with me since I was little. (He was a lot more fluffy back then; through the years he underwent several makeovers.) His name is short for “Druiloor”, which is probably best translated as “Droopy”. He was the most important dog in the world for me, hence he got the title “boss of all dogs”.
Druil on the left is a former stray cat that we took in when she was only about two months old. My wife named her after my former teddy-dog to endear me to the idea of having a cat in the house. Apparently she succeeded, because now we have six!
You can imagine that it is not an easy task for a little cat to be the boss of all dogs, but she is doing the best she can, even though she sometimes shies away from all too large underlings she encounters in the yard. However, she is a little afraid of Druil the dog; I had to take the picture while she was sleeping.
“Spotty D*g,” a toy Dalmatian whose gaping red mouth somewhat diminishes his overall cuteness (but not my fondness for him), was my mom’s childhood companion. She passed him on to me when I was born, and he’s still in pretty good shape although I had to do a little surgery on his right front paw years ago to keep the spherical rattle embedded therein from escaping.Thanks to my mom, the “Spotty D*g” family has had several new additions over the years. Spotty is pictured with one of his newer, cleaner (and nameless) family members.
I recognize I am late to the picnic, but attached is a picture of Teddie, Bunny, Elephant and Panda. Yes, I was equally imaginative as the majority of readers. Teddy is 60+ and technically my brother’s bear. I adopted him at a young age and as you can see, never gave him up. Panda was a gift from said brother when I was 8 in an attempt to make me give Teddy back. Not being furry, he didn’t quite cut it. Bunny was much loved and had to be re-stuffed, remade and dressed by my Mother after my older brothers strangled her on one of our many family road trips. My mother lovingly dressed Teddy and Panda as pirates for me, though much of the clothing was lost over the years. She had a huge collection of stuffed bears which she tried to disguise by ostensibly giving them to me, and later keeping them in my childhood room. I, however, did end up with the same addiction and my own collection.
I too had a bear that went “baaaa” when you tilted him. He is huge and is at my parents’. My aunt gave him to me when I was born and I was afraid of it at first because it was so big. I called him “Pandy”.
Sub
Spotty D*g (from about 6.35) was the star of The Woodentops when I was a kid.
The thing that cracks me up is that all of us called out bears Bear, our pandas Panda and our lions Lion.
I cannot for the life of me remember what I called my much beloved and well-travelled stuffed dog:-( She/he’s still around and looks as threadbare as the others posted here. There are about two stitches left on her left ear, I noticed today.
My little daughter (20 months) calls her little stuffed dog “wa-wa” (“wau wau” is the German equivalent to “woof, woof” and her name for dogs in general).When I was young, I called mine “Hundi” (“Hund” = dog). Undoubtedly to everybodys surprise, her little bear is called “Bär”. And she named her doll “Baby”.
I guess this “human universal” 🙂 might be due to the fact that most of the childhood plushies we really care about years later were given to us when we were very young – and our vocabulary very small.
Or we just called them what made most sense. I had a bunny I called “Bunbun”, my bear, which was my mom’s bear was called “George” as she named him after an uncle that gave him to her.
Come to think of it, I think I called my stuffed dog Hundi!! I lived in Vienna from ages 1-6 (my grandfather had sent Hundi over from LA) and spoke a mixture of English and German. Thank you CFM for triggering my memory!
And speaking of animal sounds, do you remember that kids’ game where you have to answer quickly by making specific animal sounds? We moved to Martinique when I was 6
and we played that game in French. It was soooo confusing between woof woof, wau wau, and whatever the French version was. I remember French for cock-a-doodle-dooo was something like coo-ca-ru-coo. How to mess w a little kid’s mind!