About 3°F at the moment, going down. Brrr.
Went to Crystal Lake this afternoon, where we had lunch (good) and shopped several stores looking mostly for plushies. I got some cash gifts and after buying a couple of books I wanted, thought I'd put the rest into toys. After all, it's a gift. Who wants to get new underwear and socks or whatever as a gift? I did buy a pair of slippers, actually. But I was hoping to find plush huskies at Target like the ones
Kaysho mentioned last weekend. No such luck. Not only that, but the total of their plush toy stock seemed to consist of those overpriced and non-cuddly "animated" plush toys that require batteries in order to wag their tails, bark, meow, or say obnoxious things. Not what I wanted.
OK, ToysRUs is just down the road, let's try them. Same story. They had a very small (like half a dozen four foot shelves) of actual plush, most of them the smallish kind (under a foot tall.) And they had lots and lots of those non-cuddly animated toys. I really wanted a husky, or a wolf, or a pony (though I have lots of ponies) and there were no good ones at all. On the way home, we stopped at the feed store in Woodstock to buy the expensive dry dog food our spoiled pooches get, and I looked at their selection. They always have horse plush because they stock a lot of Breyer toys. Breyer, for those who don't know the name, specializes in overpriced plastic castings of horses, many different breeds, in various poses. In recent years they have branched into Christmas tree ornaments and plush toys (also overpriced.) Some of their horses were cute, but priced too high for their size (small.) So we came home, without any new plushies, but full of lunch.
I don't know how my plush collecting friends do it. They're always posting photos of great plushies they "rescue" from various stores. Apparently Illinois is a plush wasteland. I could look all year and find little other than football team mascots and red teddy bears with gold hearts embroidered on them. Generally I resort to mail order, but the trouble with that is that you can't touch or squeeze the toys first. I like soft, huggable plush. Some of the prettiest looking ones are stuffed with hard fillings and made of fur that is nearly prickly, so judging by photos is risky. I have a very cute Clydesdale about a foot high who was that sort of disappointment. She's hard as a rock. Target's web site lists more than a thousand plush toy items, but their stores around here stock almost nothing. They have huge numbers of toys leftover from Christmas, but almost all of them are plastic action figures and dolls that tie into television cartoons or kids' movies. Apparently the local management thinks plush is out of fashion. FAO Schwarz doesn't have stores in this area any more. I think KayBee is gone too. So, it's back to the web and mail order, I guess.