Soft Toys
Stuffed Animals are Alive!
If you ask a child, stuffed animals are more than cuddly little pillows with arms and legs. If you ask a child, that’s not a stuffed animal, that’s Kimbo the lion, and he’s allergic to milk, even though he loves ice cream. To an imaginative child, a stuffed animal is more than something to cuddle, it’s something to love and endear with a unique personality and create a whole history for, something to go on adventures with.
As we’ve seen, this is a popular theme for stories about children. Of course, there’s Calvin and Hobbes, about the rambunctious six year old with a pet tiger. On first reading, the premise seems to be that Hobbes is a stuffed tiger, but a real tiger in Calvin’s imagination. To any long time reader, it becomes apparent that this is not the case. Hobbes is a real tiger, except for when grownups are seeing him. This is a pretty accurate representation. It’s not that stuffed animals aren’t real, it’s that nobody but their owners can see how real they are.