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Cuddly Toys

Started by holyzombiejesus, April 03, 2021, 12:16:39 AM

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holyzombiejesus

What was yours like? I had a homemade panda called Dylan who had a red cardigan. You could push your fingers through the knitted stitches of his face and pull out the cotton wool stuffing. I made a big gesture of passing it on to my girlfriend when I was in my twenties and asked her to look after it for me. She dumped me a few moths later and threw Dylan in the bin a few weeks after that.

My little boy was given, pre-being-born, a vile teddy from a lady who works at the school my wife teaches at. It was a lurid pink and gave you a static-shock when you touched it. We were really worried about how to best get rid of it without the colleague not realising that she'd not seen a photo of Bobby without the foul thing. Then we noticed that there was a small gift tag hidden on it's person which said 'To [the woman who gave us the teddy], From [a pupil at the school]' so we just binned the cunt.

My little boy is really in to monsters and likes these.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteWhat was yours like?

shitcheers

bgmnts

I had a little teddy with a bowtie called Woody.

Later on I had a Cartman teddy.

Buelligan

Had a lovely knitted monkey that my grandfather bought me when we went to the WI in his village together.  He was called Monkey.  Brother had a wombat called Black Pussy.  He still has that, even after all the high times and terrible bad shit he's done.  Heheh.

Kankurette

I've still got plenty of mine. My oldest are a pair of teddies, Martha and Nikolai (a polar bear). My brother's teddy Fred now sits on my kitchen window.

My mum still has Edward, her old teddy. He's got a dressing gown, he looks very suave.

Jockice

#5
I still have Bluey, a woolen (and blue) horse knitted for me by my mum when I was a toddler. He's falling apart but he's never getting thrown out. He's on a shelf in the bedroom.

In this living room I have three dogs. One on the shelf in front of me is from my girlfriend and on a shelf on the opposite side of the room there's a small one which I think I got as a present for doing some work for a charity and a very big one that a female friend bought me for my birthday once. I haven't the slightest idea why. We don't usually swap presents and apart from one snog a long time ago it's been totally platonic for the almost 30 years we've known each other.

paruses

A fluffy nylon (probably) owl called buzby that I used to push to the shops in a pram much to my father's horror. Also a knittted wasp-patterned kangaroo that my mother made. My memory of it is that is was a scale facsimile of a real kangaroo though it probably looked like a pear-shaped greyhound with a rare bone condition plus it had the colouring of a wasp. I loved both of them.

Can't remember any cuddly toys specificaly but I had a "Tivvy" money box (from TSB apparently) that I loved as a kid, can't decide if it's a bit racist or not looking at it now.



Dex Sawash

Quote from: Better Midlands on April 03, 2021, 10:13:03 AM
Can't remember any cuddly toys specificaly but I had a "Tivvy" money box (from TSB apparently) that I loved as a kid, can't decide if it's a bit racist or not looking at it now.





Dex Sawash


This cuddly knit toy won a youth division prize at the state fair a few years ago




El Unicornio, mang

The only one I had was a traditional type teddy bear (similar to this) that I loved. But the stitching around his rear end area came loose and a sizeable hole developed. One day, when I was a bit too old to be cuddling it in bed but still had it hanging around in my room, one of my friends was round, started making fun of it and said "is this where you put your willy?" and I binned it the next day :(


imitationleather

I also had a traditional teddy bear me Irish gran and grandad got me one Christmas.

What age did yours get relegated to the airing cupboard? I think I was quite young when I became aware I did not want to be sleeping with a fluffy toy anymore.

You still get lads sleeping with cuddly toys in their thirties. Don't judge and everything... But come on.

Buelligan

Heheh.  Like I said, my bro still has his but it sits by his bed now.  NOT IN THE FUCKING BED.  Alriiight?

El Unicornio, mang

I think I was 10 or 11.

Quote from: imitationleather on April 03, 2021, 11:49:24 AM

You still get lads sleeping with cuddly toys in their thirties. Don't judge and everything... But come on.

I mean each to their own but yeah I think if you're an actual adult male it's a bit weird, not far behind men who marry those anime girl pillows. I have female friends in their 40s who still sleep with teddy bears or have comfort blankies from the 80s and I don't think much of it, mind.

imitationleather

I saw some crime scene photos once (during an insomniac period that wasn't great for me) where the 31 year old victim had a little stuffed toy tucked in under his duvet.

It was touching, cute, pathetic and very sad.

The lesson here is: Always consider how your bedroom will look to people viewing it in crime scene photos after your death and decorate accordingly.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: imitationleather on April 03, 2021, 12:00:32 PM


The lesson here is: Always consider how your bedroom will look to people viewing it in crime scene photos after your death and decorate accordingly.

Also be aware that the "special drawer" we all have will be opened and thoroughly inspected, with the contents made available to close family members.

mothman

I'm a fifty year old man and I still have my three teddies (two bears and a rabbit, all quite small). It's daft I know, but I can't throw them away - they were my FRIENDS. I try not to think about what'll happen to them when I'm gone, that's how emotional it is for me.

They live in a cupboard (which I also feel obscurely guilty about). One time when my youngest was about 4 or 5 she'd lost her teddy briefly so I made a big thing of how one of mine was going to sleep with her and look after her. A couple of days later I was ill and in bed, and she came and brought me my teddy to look after ME. It was strangely lovely. Not something I'd actively look to repeat, but it tapped into some muscle memory of being safe and protected and not lonely.

Jockice

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on April 03, 2021, 11:58:31 AM
I think I was 10 or 11.

I mean each to their own but yeah I think if you're an actual adult male it's a bit weird, not far behind men who marry those anime girl pillows. I have female friends in their 40s who still sleep with teddy bears or have comfort blankies from the 80s and I don't think much of it, mind.

I have a live cat in bed with me. Sometimes. She tends to go out at night. Bluey hasn't been in bed with me for a very long time. But as I've said before I always feel uncomfortable about critiicising those who don't behave in 'normal' adult ways, like those who never leave home. You just don't know what's happened in their lives. And as I've also mentioned, it could have been me.

Having said that, I had a brief fling with a woman from one of the flats oppoisite me at the start of the century. In her 40s, a loudmouthed pisshead, a former policewoman no less. Yet she had several cuddly toys on her bed. Mind you, she also had a room with 200 pairs of shoes in it..she really was too weird for even me to deal with.

the last time I spoke to her was a few years ago, when I drove past her and stopped to say hello. She immediately jumped into the passenger seat and said: "Take me to the train station." Er, I'm not a taxi you know...

Buelligan

Quote from: mothman on April 03, 2021, 12:57:51 PM
I'm a fifty year old man and I still have my three teddies (two bears and a rabbit, all quite small). It's daft I know, but I can't throw them away - they were my FRIENDS. I try not to think about what'll happen to them when I'm gone, that's how emotional it is for me.

They live in a cupboard (which I also feel obscurely guilty about). One time when my youngest was about 4 or 5 she'd lost her teddy briefly so I made a big thing of how one of mine was going to sleep with her and look after her. A couple of days later I was ill and in bed, and she came and brought me my teddy to look after ME. It was strangely lovely. Not something I'd actively look to repeat, but it tapped into some muscle memory of being safe and protected and not lonely.

I don't think that's anything other than lovely, mothman.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say, shame about having things like this is something imposed upon us (especially men) by an isolating and desensitising culture and we should kick its arse right back.  My bro went to jail once for GBH (on some US marines ye-hah), that's what the hardness of our upbringing and the world we lived in did to that little boy (and the little boys he smacked).  One of the most endearing things about him, one of the things I love most and that connects me most intimately and closely with him, the gentle vulnerable beloved person he is, is that old black wombat.  Wouldn't change it for the world.

Sebastian Cobb


El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: Jockice on April 03, 2021, 01:13:39 PM
I have a live cat in bed with me.

I do too (although only because she insists).

I also paint plastic fantasy figures, or "dolls" as my ex called them, so who am I to judge...

Pink Gregory

So I had two given to me when I was born; 'white bear', a floppy, delightfully soft chap with this odd satisfyingly tactile tail, and some fuckin terrifying stiff jointed bear with a tartan bowtie that did a drunken roar when you tipped it forward.  Never named that one.

Norton Canes

No cuddly toy. Probably explains my personality disorders.

Glebe

I had a big Danger Mouse!

Attila

I think I have all of my cuddly toys, and my oldest, most fragile ones currently live on their own special shelf here in the room I have at the house. A number of other ones are piled up on my side of the bed, and are often rotated which ones are under the covers with me at night. No fucks given that anyone thinks this is weird for a middle-aged woman. (As someone said above, I worry about my toys being flung in a skip when I'm gone, as well).

Over the past year, as I have time, I've been playing teddy bear hospital with the more fragile ones as and when I can repair them. One major restoration was the china doll my grandmother threw together for me probably shortly after I was born. She was crafty and creative, but my god was she fucking sloppy and cut corners. She made her living making stuff for craft fairs and all that, and constantly cut corners. My sister, cousin, and I all get our abilities to do handwork and stuff from whatever genes made up her evil body.

But anyway, the china doll -- all of the stuffing in that doll (and many of my childhood toys) has now degraded into this horrible brown powder -- were I older, my toys would have been stuffed with wool, horsehair, or sawdust, but late 50s into the 1970s, it's all this spongy polyester stuff that degrades -- which also damages the cotton fabric of the toy.

My china doll was full of this horrible stuff, but fortunately, it did not affect the cloth of her body. Over a few weeks, I gutted her and hoovered out what was left of that nasty stuff, took off and reset her arms in the correct places (my grandmother had attached them so sloppily that the doll's dress didn't fit correctly), and restuffed her with leftover wool from my spinning projects. I cleaned her dress and underthings as best I could and repaired the dress. I swear she actually looks happier now.

The huge task, though, as been my original bunny. My mother made him from one of those cotton fabric panels that's got a toy printed on it -- you cut it out and stuff it. He was my constant companion til I was about 9, when he was too fragile to sleep with anymore, and my hippo, bought with 9 whole dollars of my pocket money, took his place. Not to worry, bunny got an important place on the back of my bed. However, over the years, that polyfill shit inside him also degraded to nasty brown powder that hardened, absorbed smells from the air, and started to cause his fabric to rot. I had kept him carefully wrapped in a clean pillow case til a few months ago when I thought, right, can I restore him?

Nope -- Bear in mind, he's already covered with fabric patches from my childhood, where my mom had fixed him a few times.

Here he is in action with me, Christmas 1973 -- I would have been 8 here. The white teddy bear was another from-babyhood bear, and he's happily sat on my shelf at the moment as I write. (He's next for restoration). Lots of swag here for me, and (just out of shot) my non-tosser brother was helping me with all of it -- he was about 16 at the time, and I think got as big a kick out of playing with me and my toys as I did.



The first thing I did, was use one of his busted seams to start getting all of that caked brown powder out of him -- not an easy task as simply pressing on his cotton fabric body caused the fabric to disintegrate. I managed to remove about 99% of the powder, and gave him a very very gentle bath -- but he was still rank, as I couldn't wash him as well as I would have liked. So he spent several weeks getting nuked: hung outside on the line in the wind on bright sunny days. That can do a hell of a lot drying out and freshening up an old piece of fabric.

But he is too far gone to restuff. I had a thought about it, and as I've mentioned, I do a lot of stuff with Roman history -- I was out at the Altes Museum in Berlin in December 2019, and took a lot of photos of the Fayum Mummy paintings -- and had an ephiphany: I'd make him his own fabric sarcophagus. I can't restuff him, but I can sure as fuck cocoon him in the centre of a new body, stuffed with wool around him.

Here he is in his cleaned, but dilapidated state: I was able to remove my mom's patch for his head and look at his face for the first time in 45 years.



Long story short -- I've managed to recreate him on new muslin using Pigma inks and a bit of fabric paint. This will be the exterior of the 'new' toy, with old bunny nestled inside of him.



Old bunny himself will be seated inside a much simpler muslin shell, so that the wool stuffing can go between the simple shell and the new exterior.

I'm not much of an artist, but I am pleased with the result; the outer shell is hanging on the back of my door because I still need to set the paints with heat, and every time I glance over at it, I'm startled at how well I've captured the original bunny, considering all I had for reference.

So yeah, any time anyone wants to give me a hard time about still having a quarter fuckton of my old cuddly toys or that I've invested so much time and trouble in preserving what is little more than an old rag at this point, I will fucking cut them.

Kankurette

Quote from: imitationleather on April 03, 2021, 11:49:24 AM
I also had a traditional teddy bear me Irish gran and grandad got me one Christmas.

What age did yours get relegated to the airing cupboard? I think I was quite young when I became aware I did not want to be sleeping with a fluffy toy anymore.

You still get lads sleeping with cuddly toys in their thirties. Don't judge and everything... But come on.
Mine all sit on an armchair. There's a couple on the windowsill in my kitchen as well. I don't take them to bed with me though.
Quote from: mothman on April 03, 2021, 12:57:51 PM
I'm a fifty year old man and I still have my three teddies (two bears and a rabbit, all quite small). It's daft I know, but I can't throw them away - they were my FRIENDS. I try not to think about what'll happen to them when I'm gone, that's how emotional it is for me.

They live in a cupboard (which I also feel obscurely guilty about). One time when my youngest was about 4 or 5 she'd lost her teddy briefly so I made a big thing of how one of mine was going to sleep with her and look after her. A couple of days later I was ill and in bed, and she came and brought me my teddy to look after ME. It was strangely lovely. Not something I'd actively look to repeat, but it tapped into some muscle memory of being safe and protected and not lonely.
Awwwww!

Like I said, my mum still has her old teddy and my stepdad's still got his, and they're in their sixties. They're sat next to each other. I don't think having old soft toys is anything to be ashamed of unless you've got an entire roomful of the things.

checkoutgirl

Quote from: imitationleather on April 03, 2021, 11:49:24 AM
I think I was quite young when I became aware I did not want to be sleeping with a fluffy toy anymore.

Yeah I tried to think of what teddy I must have had as a kid and could only get a vague shimmering outline of something and now it's gone. Can't remember. I tend to throw away stuff after a few years. The thing I remember holding onto for fucking decades was my M.A.S.K duvet cover which might have lasted up to 2005 or a bit later.

It's strange that I don't have more crap from ages ago because I'm really quite prone to nostalgia and mementos and that.

checkoutgirl

Quote from: imitationleather on April 03, 2021, 12:00:32 PM
The lesson here is: Always consider how your bedroom will look to people viewing it in crime scene photos after your death and decorate accordingly.

Shot of that old corpse with the massive dildos.

Buelligan

Quote from: Attila on April 03, 2021, 02:39:35 PM
I think I have all of my cuddly toys, and my oldest, most fragile ones currently live on their own special shelf here in the room I have at the house. A number of other ones are piled up on my side of the bed, and are often rotated which ones are under the covers with me at night. No fucks given that anyone thinks this is weird for a middle-aged woman. (As someone said above, I worry about my toys being flung in a skip when I'm gone, as well).

Over the past year, as I have time, I've been playing teddy bear hospital with the more fragile ones as and when I can repair them. One major restoration was the china doll my grandmother threw together for me probably shortly after I was born. She was crafty and creative, but my god was she fucking sloppy and cut corners. She made her living making stuff for craft fairs and all that, and constantly cut corners. My sister, cousin, and I all get our abilities to do handwork and stuff from whatever genes made up her evil body.

But anyway, the china doll -- all of the stuffing in that doll (and many of my childhood toys) has now degraded into this horrible brown powder -- were I older, my toys would have been stuffed with wool, horsehair, or sawdust, but late 50s into the 1970s, it's all this spongy polyester stuff that degrades -- which also damages the cotton fabric of the toy.

My china doll was full of this horrible stuff, but fortunately, it did not affect the cloth of her body. Over a few weeks, I gutted her and hoovered out what was left of that nasty stuff, took off and reset her arms in the correct places (my grandmother had attached them so sloppily that the doll's dress didn't fit correctly), and restuffed her with leftover wool from my spinning projects. I cleaned her dress and underthings as best I could and repaired the dress. I swear she actually looks happier now.

The huge task, though, as been my original bunny. My mother made him from one of those cotton fabric panels that's got a toy printed on it -- you cut it out and stuff it. He was my constant companion til I was about 9, when he was too fragile to sleep with anymore, and my hippo, bought with 9 whole dollars of my pocket money, took his place. Not to worry, bunny got an important place on the back of my bed. However, over the years, that polyfill shit inside him also degraded to nasty brown powder that hardened, absorbed smells from the air, and started to cause his fabric to rot. I had kept him carefully wrapped in a clean pillow case til a few months ago when I thought, right, can I restore him?

Nope -- Bear in mind, he's already covered with fabric patches from my childhood, where my mom had fixed him a few times.

Here he is in action with me, Christmas 1973 -- I would have been 8 here. The white teddy bear was another from-babyhood bear, and he's happily sat on my shelf at the moment as I write. (He's next for restoration). Lots of swag here for me, and (just out of shot) my non-tosser brother was helping me with all of it -- he was about 16 at the time, and I think got as big a kick out of playing with me and my toys as I did.



The first thing I did, was use one of his busted seams to start getting all of that caked brown powder out of him -- not an easy task as simply pressing on his cotton fabric body caused the fabric to disintegrate. I managed to remove about 99% of the powder, and gave him a very very gentle bath -- but he was still rank, as I couldn't wash him as well as I would have liked. So he spent several weeks getting nuked: hung outside on the line in the wind on bright sunny days. That can do a hell of a lot drying out and freshening up an old piece of fabric.

But he is too far gone to restuff. I had a thought about it, and as I've mentioned, I do a lot of stuff with Roman history -- I was out at the Altes Museum in Berlin in December 2019, and took a lot of photos of the Fayum Mummy paintings -- and had an ephiphany: I'd make him his own fabric sarcophagus. I can't restuff him, but I can sure as fuck cocoon him in the centre of a new body, stuffed with wool around him.

Here he is in his cleaned, but dilapidated state: I was able to remove my mom's patch for his head and look at his face for the first time in 45 years.



Long story short -- I've managed to recreate him on new muslin using Pigma inks and a bit of fabric paint. This will be the exterior of the 'new' toy, with old bunny nestled inside of him.



Old bunny himself will be seated inside a much simpler muslin shell, so that the wool stuffing can go between the simple shell and the new exterior.

I'm not much of an artist, but I am pleased with the result; the outer shell is hanging on the back of my door because I still need to set the paints with heat, and every time I glance over at it, I'm startled at how well I've captured the original bunny, considering all I had for reference.

So yeah, any time anyone wants to give me a hard time about still having a quarter fuckton of my old cuddly toys or that I've invested so much time and trouble in preserving what is little more than an old rag at this point, I will fucking cut them.

Wow, this is the best toy story I ever read!  The sarcophagus concept is such an inspired one, I could hardly believe my own eyes reading it.  Marvelous, marvelous, stuff.  On the dying and what happens to the dear ones after, I'm thinking I'll likely outlive my bro (for reasons), anyway, my secret plan is to put Black Puss, his dog collars and my hair (I know, it's very long) into his box for the fire.  That's my plan.  Off to Valhalla together.