Have fun storming the castle!

Best seven dollars I've spent in a long time--see the results here:
















Yes, it's yet another Little People set. But this time, it's the castle. The castle, hurrah! I found it for a measly seven dollars, as mentioned above, at the fall consignment sale at Brentwood Methodist. And to think that I nearly skipped that sale.

You may be wondering why this is such a big deal. Well, the Little People castle has been like the Holy Grail of Little People toys for me. My own church in Hoover had one of the original LP castles back in the late '70s/early '80s--the kind that was tall and imposing and took up half the floor and had a dungeon with a working trap door and a moat and everything. It was really quite amazing. I remember how we used to all love to haul that thing out of the toy storage areas and play with it. Everything else paled in comparison, even the McDonald's toy with the working cash register.

So I'd always wanted to get one for my very own...er, for my son's very own. But for some unknown but clearly misguided reason, the ordinarily reasonable Fisher-Price folks decided to stop making the regular old Little People castle a couple of years ago and only make it in pink. Bilious, nausea-inducing pink. With lots of purple and frills and curlicues and stuff. Blech. What was that line in "A Christmas Story" again? You know, when the dad gazes upon his son in a pink bunny suit? Oh yes. "You look like a pink nightmare." The current incarnation of the castle is definitely a pink nightmare.

Now, y'all know that I'm a girly girl. Typically, I'm All About the Pink. But my little boy is not so much a girly girl. So I'm thinking pink? For a castle? C'mon. And as enlighted as I may be, I'm still not going to buy a pinky-pink castle for my rough-and-tumble two-year-old boy. I'm still not clear on why they decided to make the castle pink in the first place. Castles are about knights, and dragons, and dungeons and kings and stuff. If there are going to be any colors, really they should be earthy, stone-y colors, maybe with some royal purple and red thrown in. There's no crying in baseball, and there's no pink in castles.

For a plastic toy, the old version got it right.
















And as you can see by William's big grin, he loves it. He's been playing with it all weekend, ever since I carried it in the door on Friday afternoon. With the help of his grandmother, he's even christened the dragons "Pow" and "Wow." This is one of the very first times he's ever given any of his toys a real name. And he's been chattering to himself as he plays with it, engaging in that age-old development phenomenon of narrating his play. It's quite hilarious to listen to, but also rather charming.

Anyway, seven dollars! Woot!