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Simpsons Beanies - Itchy, Scratchy, Blinky, Snowball II and Santa's Little Helper

For size comparisons,  a WB Poison Ivy beanie next to the Itchy beanie.


His counterpart, Scratchy:


Since these aren't action figures, they won't follow the usual format for my reviews.  Instead, I'll just give you my basic impressions of each beanie, with an overall score at the end. 

This set of beanies is being produced by a U.K. company called Giftware, and so far are only available to Americans through the web.  They are available at two web sites that I know of - the official Simpsons web site at www.thesimpsons.com, and the Giftware web site at http://www.giftware-international.com/
I haven't ordered directly from Giftware, but I've heard good things about them (thanks Jeanette!).

First a little about www.thesimpsons.com where I bought these.  They are actually What's Hot Now - all the billing, shipping and customer service is through them.  And they had alot of trouble with this order.  First, it took a couple weeks to see any part of the order.  Then I received a partial order, missing SLH and Snowball II.  I didn't receive a packing slip at all, so I called and was informed that they couldn't see my order from 'this terminal', but that I'd probably receive the rest of my order in a week or so.  Sure enough, within a few days another box showed up, but it was exactly the same as the first order - another Itchy, Scratchy and Blinky, but no sign of the other two.  Finally, about two weeks later, the other two arrived.  I have nothing good to say about the service or reliability of ordering from simpsons.com or whatshotnow.com

Itchy - **1/2
Not bad, in terms of likeness and execution.  He's too big of course - being the same size as Scratchy, and having the much larger head makes him seem way out of proportion.  But it's a good likeness.

Scratchy - **
Not bad, but the execution could have been better.  The felt 'hair' sticking up from his head doesn't look right, messing up what otherwise would have been a great beanie.

Blinky - ***1/2
Terrific likeness - but how hard is it to mess up?  The execution on this was straight forward, and they got it right.  Easily my favorite of the set.

Santa's Little Helper - ***
Another well done one. Looks like the character, and doesn't have any cheap or cheesy components.

Snowball II - **1/2
Size is his only problem - he looks good, but he's just too big compared to the others.

Overall - **1/2
Price hurts these guys more than anything.  While I was thrilled with Itchy's size or Scratchy's head, the fact that these cost $11.95 from thesimpsons.com makes it tough to recommend them on value.  The fact that they are imported from England is certainly a factor in the cost, but it still seems excessive to me.  Definitely for the hardcore fan only.

I did like the fact that they are not doing the humans - we have plenty of those.  Instead, by doing the various animals they are adding characters that we normally don't get to see.

Of special note - Ty found out that they were calling these 'beanies' on the hang tag.

Ty asked them (with a squad of lawyers, I'm sure) to stop doing that - Ty has a trademark on the word 'beanie'.  So you may receive one without the word 'beanie' on the tag, or it may be marked out with a pen.  If you get them unedited, and you care about such things, then consider yourself lucky.

A side view of our favorite fish, Blinky:


If you look close you can see that 'beanie' on SLH's tag is crossed out with a pen...


Figure from the collection of Michael Crawford.

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