Countdown to Christmas: Sandylion (part 2 of 2)

Reason number two why Sandylion made the cutest Christmas stickers: their activity sticker sets. I know you remember "dress a bear." They made about a jillion other sticker sets like it, including an array of Christmas designs, each one as cute as the next. A sampling:

Yes, I *will* adorn a Christmas unicorn, thank you very much.

Even I could not leave this one in pristine condition. Look at the dog in the window!

 

A detail from "On Christmas Eve Would you Believe the Forest Gave a Party?"

Dying from the cuteness.

I am not even showing you all of them. There is also Dress Santa for Christmas, Design a Wreath, and Create an Ornament. (Or maybe it was Create a Wreath and Design an Ornament.)

Remember the frolicking sheep?

 

They go, more or less, with these guys.

Wait for it...

Yes, they did. Happy Cyber Monday!

Countdown to Christmas: Sandylion (part 1)

Santa Claus ushered in the Christmukkah season at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and it's a winter wonderland of holiday sticker selections from now until January 1. Which is exciting, because no matter what your religious beliefs, I would maintain that Christmas stickers are super-cute and beat out all the Hannukah and Kwanzaa stickers combined. I don't say this lightly; as a Unitarian, I respect and acknowledge all faith traditions, but as a sticker collector, I am securely biased towards Christmas. 

I pondered recently which sticker company made the cutest Christmas stickers, and I decided it was Sandylion. Their designs are adorable, as demonstrated through their little fuzzy Santa heads and opalescent bears.

 And the fat little Christmas tree, stockings, and holly.

Then there are these full-size Santas and fuzzy bears:

And OMG the reindeer heads and the snowmen...

You get the picture. Sandylion made some other, Very Special Christmas Stickers as well, which you may remember. To be continued...

Stickers to soothe the soul

Since holiday angst is upon us all, I thought: what better remedy than to post some super-cute stickers to assuage frayed nerves?

Sanrio is good to start with...

 Frolicking sheep are always calming.

 Breathe in, breathe out...even the football is smiling!

Don't you feel better now?

Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! ACK!

I know the comic strip figure Cathy has been the butt of jokes in recent years, even mocked on Saturday Night Live, but I confess I have always liked Cathy and her creator, Cathy Guisewite.

. 

I'm not sure what this sticker is supposed to mean.

Cathy is best-remembered for obsessing about her weight--and chocolate in particular--in an annoying way.

I know; you read this and you're all like, "really, Cathy? You like chocolate THAT much?"

But going through my sticker collection makes me wonder if we weren't all obsessed with chocolate in the 1980s.

To ponder: was it an obsession with chocolate, or did the 1980s just have an eating disorder? For every sticker featuring something fattening, I also seem to have a sticker expressing anxiety over dieting.

Let's give Cathy a break, here. She was simply reflecting the cultural mores of her era. From a feminist point of view. As long as women are held up to an impossibly high standard of beauty and fitness then we are all doomed to have a complicated relationship with food. 

To return to Boynton:

Holly Hobbie

Part three of three in this week's series on 1970s American nostalgia.

I am not wild about the new Holly Hobbie, to be sure. This is what she is supposed to look like:

 The very essence of Holly Hobbie is old-fashioned. She is calico, bonnets, bloomers, country innocence...

Butterflies, flowers, kittens...

Very Anne of Green Gables-meets-Little House on the Prairie. She was made into a rag doll, and appeared on toy boxes, wallpaper, children's birthday cards, etc. Perhaps she was of an era; but then why re-make her? Why corrupt the name and make something ultra-modern out of her?

Things I don't mind about the new Holly: she doesn't spend all her time shopping, but seems to hang with her friends and go hiking and things like that. Also, she's not a complete prostitute. Finally, she belongs to the "Hey Girls" club so that the website says things like "Dress up Hey Girl paper dolls."

Hey Girl, come take a ride on my carousel...

Don't ask me, I'm just a girl

I now have documentation in my sticker collection of the "new" Strawberry Shortcake. It's not so much that I object to change per se: I know what was marketable in 1981 may not be marketable now; logos change; products are redesigned. I do get it.

Why though does Strawberry Shortcake have to be so freaking vapid? The only thing she is doing in these stickers is shopping.

"Hey girls! Let's go buy some clothes at the mall!"

"I just LOVE shopping!"

It reminds me of the episode of the Simpsons where Lisa is disappointed by the new, talking Malibu Stacy doll (based on a "Teen Talk Barbie") who says things like, "Don't ask me, I'm just a girl." And "Let's make cookies for the boys."

"I love my new outfit."

At least Barbie has had a career trajectory. This just makes me ill.

Important update! Betsey Clark!

Betsey Clark has been identified as the artist of the below-mentioned stickers.

It bears clarifying, Betsey Clark is NOT affiliated with Precious Moments.

Precious Moments

Not a Precious Moment.

Late night musings on Joan Walsh Anglund

If you are a child of the seventies, then you probably remember Joan Walsh Anglund's iconic illustrations. Sweet, turn-of-the-century era American girls and boys (who featured in such books as A Friend is Someone Who Likes You) had round faces and no noses or mouths. Like Hello Kitty, you say? But no.

This reminds me of a scene out of Howard's End:

My grandmother had a small collection of her books that she would read to us, and my mother's subscription to Good Housekeeping sometimes featured Joan Walsh Anglund's "Children's Page" with cut-out activities like paper dolls. So even at a very young age, I got it: Joan Walsh Anglund was for children!

Please do not confuse Joan Walsh Anglund with Precious Moments, Holly Hobbie*, or other characters whose designs were available through Hallmarks stores.

I had sheets with these figures on them. Does anyone know who they were?

Not Joan Walsh Anglund

Joan Walsh Anglund

Not Joan

Joan

Now, I need to digress for a moment and point out that Precious Moments (which I thought the above figures were at first) has become such an industry that there is a Precious Moments park in Missouri. My friend Natasha first mentioned this to me, and I have since learned that not only is there a park, there is a chapel that was "inspired by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in Rome" (oh, THAT Sistine Chapel!).

"The art on the east side of the Chapel depicts the Bible’s Old Testament stories; while New Testament stories are shown on the west side. .... All of the murals combine to cover nearly 5,000 square feet – truly a breathtaking sight."

OMG I need to see this before I die.

Why doesn't Joan Walsh Anglund have a park?? I would totally go.

*Holly Hobbie will receive her own post in due time because, much like Strawberry Shortcake, she has been tarted up and it is just NOT cool.

Recent acquisitions

I like to think of my sticker collection as a museum. A kind of private museum that isn't open to the public and never deaccessions anything. But I do continue to collect, so here are a few recent additions to the collection.

From Mary, these adorable, Japanese-style Momiji stickers:

 

These remind me of old school, Valentine's Day stickers. But now I can practice my German and Italian at the same time that I make construction paper hearts with doilies. 

 It's a declaration of sorts.

Super-cute.

 

I also did some shopping on the Mrs. Grossman's website and found these beautiful, laser-cut stickers for the fall season:

 I think it says something about me that I can look at a sticker with a witch, bats, and a haunted house, and every time think that the "Boo!" says "1300!" Because, you know, the 1300s were a pretty awesome century (just think of the contributions to the Sienese school of painting alone). 

1300!

Hard-to-photograph.

Probably my favorite from the group.

Then I went with some more obviously cute designs:

 

Better for Easter than for Thanksgiving.

After butterflies and dragonflies, ladybugs are the only acceptably adorable insect.