I still have a ridiculous amount of my stuffed toys at my mum’s house. Since I live on my own now, I’ve skirted the need to get rid of them. But anyone who sees my bedroom at my mum’s would think I’m 6.
I don’t know. It’s a piece of my childhood. How many people have regrets of baseball cards, marbles, old action figures that get pitched away when you’re supposed to “grow up?” I have my NES games, my old baseball gloves, and my stuffed toys. I’m keepin’ mine, I have no incentive to get rid of them!
I have a bunch of stuffed animals and dolls. Making them is a hobby of mine. Sometimes I follow a pattern in a book but more often I look at a character in a video game or anime and figure out how I can make it. Occasionally I make photo books or online photo stories of one of my dolls fighting with a giant squid or some such. I am also the type, which may horrify you, who takes a little doll on trips and photographs its adventures.
Porcelain dolls are much freakier than stuffed animals, and action figures still in their packages are more obnoxious.
If you’ve got a bunch of stuffed animals and are perfectly fine in every other way, it’s a quirk, or even particularly adorable if you’ve secretly got one or two for sentimental reasons and are anything but soft in your everyday life. If you’re a hoarder or have an alternate personality that’s slightly mentally disabled or permanently 10-years-old, then you’ve got a problem.
I’m 56 and sleep with a stuffed bunny. I have another half-dozen on a chair in my bedroom (including my #1 stuffed animal from childhood, and one my mother gave me the Christmas a few months before she died) and one large one – wearing a pair of overalls and a trucker hat – on a chair in my living room.
I also have a beanie-baby style lizard draped over my monitor at work.
I have the Holiday BunBun given to me by the comic author. He sits on a shelf with a stuffed Beast of Caerbannog and the Wallace and Grommit Wererabbit; it’s sort of a scary rabbit theme but I can’t find any more for that collection.
I am mumbly-mumbly years old. I also have many other stuffed animals, many still packed away until I can get proper display shelves, some I’ve had since I was a child (including my first Teddy bear). Also some Looney Toons characters, Marvin the Martian and his dog (I was so happy to find that one), Wile E (of course) the Roadrunner. Then there’s a Klingon bear, the Pink Panther, Fluffy from Harry Potter, a couple of the rats from Rattatouille and a Minion (won those in a crane game). Just to name a few. And yes, the cold dead hands thing applies.
The ones on my bed? Something to cuddle at night. That or my pillow when not with my snuggle bunny. The ones in my car are meant to be quirky and keep me company on my drive. A penguin in a t-shirt, a bunny my snuggle bunny gave me, a chick that my son won at the fair and for fun, I have a small stuffed bat ‘sleeping’ from the rearview mirror.
Lots of the ones I’ve kept have memories attached. Dino, a purple dinosaur I’ve had for years, a girl doll dressed in a brownie uniform (the old one), a fox that was bought with my friend when we were shopping for her wedding (me, her and her maid of honor all got a different one), several sheep because I like to knit, Richard because… well he’s just awesome!
Something small and fuzzy to make me smile or bring me a happy memory. That’s the whole joy of them.
Is there such a thing as too old for stuffed animals? I’m 47 and I have no intention of giving up mine. The ones that I will save in a fire are the eeyore my Mom made me when I was a kid (I remember her making him for me), the horse my Dad brought me from a business trip, and a weird stuffed mouse that I think may have been my Mom’s when she was child. There’s lots of other ones, tucked here and there, and last time I moved, when I packed them all up, I realized I had way too many for an adult, but I don’t care.
Most of mine are second hand. Some I buy for my dogs and then decide they are too cute to be ripped apart, some I buy because they have some special appeal - usually the ones that look handmade, or really old, or just like they need to be loved. Velveteen rabbit, anyone???
I wouldn’t say I get “pleasure,” out of them…I just think they’re cute and don’t want to get rid of them, and my future children would be more than welcome to have them.
I have never drank chocolate milk at a restaurant but I frequently drink it in general.
No, not every guy. Many probably wouldn’t even give it a thought unless there were rows of them on the bed or shelves.
My 21 year old daughter fell in love with the panda pillow pets and bought one for herself for Christmas. She has a few panda plushies laying around. From what she said her male friends might tease her but they end up playing with them.
Usually in some slightly naughty way.
27 and male. You mock my mouse, you leave my house. I’ve had that mouse since I was three, and I have no intention of getting rid of it or hiding it in a closet somewhere.
Interestingly enough, though, it rarely comes up; I’ve gotten far more questions about the Tears For Fears poster than the stuffed animal.
Yeah, I’m a guy and I wouldn’t look into it too far, unless you talked to them or something. I have some things that I’ve had “forever,” so I can understand the sentimental value. Actually I still have an old stuffed animal myself, my cat loves to take naps on it.
That said, I have a shelf with several stuffed toys that have sentimental value. There’s a bunny and a bear made for me by one sister when she was in college and didn’t have much money to buy Christmas and birthday gifts, so made them. Then there’s the rag dolly that my mom made for me one hard candy Christmas (she made one for each of us girls and Dad made beds for them, which my granddaughter now has). There’s a bear that my baby sis made for me out of an old, soft pair of my grandfather’s striped bib overalls after his passing. It reminds me of both of them.
The only one that gets any practical use is a (stuffed) Sharpei dog that was a stocking stuffer one year. It makes a nice chin rest when I read to fall asleep.
I’m 30, male, and I sleep with an elephant. When I received this particular elephant (you see my other elephant was indisposed, and so it was determined that I would benefit from another), I noticed that she looked pretty girly. “What’s a good name for a girly elephant?” I thought. Well, you see, my completely insane 8-year-old niece had just told me about her stuffed cat, who was named after her two favorite colors*. And that’s how I ended up with Sparkly Rainbows.
Also, there’s a turtle in our apartment. His blog.
*This was the same conversation in which we learned about her invisible hamster named Mr. Guinea Pig.
You’re never too old. I turn 24…er…two weeks from now. I still have stuffed animals in my room. My childhood ones are packed away in a box, so I don’t interact with them or anything, but I’m not about to get rid of them. I also have one of those pillow pets (an elephant named Lumpy) that I sometimes use as a pillow, and a stuffed mouse that I bought from IKEA. The latter was in their “$5 and under” section, and I thought it was cute, so I snatched it up. His name is Mousy and he lives next to my bed.
I also have my old security blanket tucked up in my closet. The first time I didn’t sleep with it on a long-term basis (apart from the odd, tearful nights I couldn’t find it) was when I went off to college. I was afraid I’d miss it terribly and wouldn’t be able to sleep as a result, but it was surprisingly easy to let it go. I’d still sleep with it whenever I went back home, but when my boyfriend moved in with me and I started sleeping in his bedroom, I put it in the closet and it’s stayed there ever since. I don’t need to sleep with it anymore, but again, I don’t want to get rid of it.
I also want one of these. Expensive, yes, but they’re just so darn cute! And I notice that they seem to be marketed towards folks my age.
Okay, those are cute. You bring up a good point, that in the spirit of LOLCats and the like there seem to be kids’ toys and stuffed animals (as well as action figures) being marketed to full grown adults with lots of money. These come to mind. 30 is the new 13!
