Mike's Toybox

I’m a sucker for cute shit.

A sucker. That’s why I broke down and bought a My Melody dollhouse, and only partly because I liked the little behooded bunny as a child in the 80s.

Sanrio had a ton of these cute playsets produced from 2005 to about 2009(?), and they’re pretty much all like this: somewhat modular and highly elaborate playsets with lots of bright colors and metric tons of furniture and decals. There’s a “do-it-yourself” element to them as well, which can also be fun if you’re into building and modeling, but if you get this toy for a daughter or little sister, you may want to help them assemble it, since you’ll likely need sprue cutters and a hobby knife to get the job done without breaking anything.

Some parts seem more fragile than others, so you’ll wanna be a bit cautious. The figures are thin, hollow plastic, not solid like I had first thought, and a few pieces like the flowers and bath faucet look like they wouldn’t last very long in the hands of a careless child. Get something like this for someone who knows how to care for their miniatures.

The trickiest part to deal with is the house extension that clips into the front yard: the first time you do it is a little tough because it has never been assembled before, so the pegs have to force their way through the holes in the yard decal; after that it’s a bit more manageable. If you want you can probably make the pegs shorter so it’s easier to add/remove, or cut them off altogether to make the house more modular. Now it can be a front room extension, a basement, you name it. The whole playset can be packed away inside itself like a bento box, which is pretty nice. I worry constantly about the little bathtub faucet, but that might be my anal-retentive gene kicking in.

You don’t have to apply any of the cutesy decals, either. You could easily make your own if you’re at all artistically inclined.

As a kid I had to play with girl toys more than once, and I usually managed to anger the girls with my deranged creativity. As I’ve stated in previous posts, a dollhouse is a blank slate where anything can happen. Doesn’t have to be just for playing house.

Sure, she has an air of sweetness and innocence about her. That’s so you don’t suspect the basement sex dungeon hidden behind the kitchen cupboards.

“Take your flowery shit and GET OUT, you two-timing hussy!”

Living out in the country has its downsides. Twenty miles to the nearest comic shop!

Also spiders.