{"id":1364,"date":"2025-05-05T14:01:35","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T14:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2025-05-04T21:03:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T21:03:16","slug":"tales-from-storage-the-squinkies-squad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/?p=1364","title":{"rendered":"Tales from storage: The Squinkies squad"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I hadn’t sold or gifted away most of them you could probably expect this column to be nothing but dodgy toys and action figures picked up from resale outlets like TK Maxx, Pound Stretcher, and wherever else used to be in the vicinity of Abbeycentre. I was certain I’d chucked these things years ago!<\/p>\n


\nah, Pound Stretcher, we hardly knew ye
\nactually we knew you extremely well, like your glut of merch for Spider Riders<\/i> and The Golden Compass<\/i>, but those foibles seem charming in hindsight
\nabsence makes the heart grow fonder and all that
\nespecially when this entire strip is just a dirty big void now<\/span><\/p>\n


\nSo, Squinkies. I haven’t a ballsy what they are. They’re soft, slightly malleable inch-tall figurines that exist to be stored in little ball capsules, it seems? And then you can stow them inside a stubby plastic vehicle? At least, that’s what I’ve picked up from the two sets I had in my possession.
\nI was fully expecting these things to be extremely short-lived and long gone by now, and although their website<\/a> is still in business (albeit extremely downsized from its previous iterations<\/a>)<\/span>, I’m having a hard time finding evidence new ones are being sold, or that Blip Toys is still in operation. Their YouTube channel<\/a> hasn’t updated since before the pandemic, which isn’t a good sign.<\/p>\n


\nThe ones I’d encountered in the wild seemed to be skewed towards the boys toys market, the logo featuring robots, ninjas, and American football players, but its other products definitely lean more into cutesy territory. There’s a buttload of adorable little animal characters<\/a> to collect, and the website very much expects kids to collect these things en masse, to the point where it has pages offering suggestions on how to best display them, or even for parents to incorporate them into homework lessons<\/a> somehow.<\/p>\n


\nI’d bought another Squinkies set featuring a cute little green tank, hoping to repurpose it for a Metal Slug<\/i> diorama, but you should not be surprised I spend more energy in my life dreaming rather than doing.<\/p>\n


\nNo idea why I got this Space Ride set, beyond it probably being too cheap or too cute to resist. And in fairness, it is a bloody adorable little vehicle. It’s the perfect size for little hands to whoosh around, though even its rounded fins would cause some damage if they made impact with enough velocity.<\/p>\n


\n
\nI guess I’m just not sure what exact age demographic they have in mind. The aesthetic is extremely Playskool, and the texture of these things feels tailor-made to be chewed upon by teething infants, despite its “not for children under 3” warning. The comments on Lulaloopsey’s “A Deep Dive Into Squinkies”<\/a> video unanimously rave about the mouth-feel of these things, so, hey, it had that going for it. Kids gotta satiate oral fixations without cigarettes one way or another.<\/p>\n


\nToy fansites are among some of my most favourite esoteric things, and it pains me that they just don’t exist in as great detail or frequency as they used to. This FanPop club<\/a> seems to be the best one-stop-shop for images, though no sign of this or the other Squinkies Boys vehicle sets.
\nIt did enlighten me to the fact there’s not only a gamut of licensed toys for Disney, Marvel and Spongebob Squarepants<\/i>, but also two Nintendo DS games? You know I love it when video games are the best preserved relic of long-gone products, and I gotta know how many DS games are tie-ins to dead and buried toylines. Homie Rollerz<\/i><\/a> can’t be the only one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I hadn’t sold or gifted away most of them you could probably expect this column to be nothing but dodgy toys and action figures picked up from resale outlets like TK Maxx, Pound Stretcher, and wherever else used to be in the vicinity of Abbeycentre. I was certain I’d chucked these things years ago! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[98,29],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tales-from-storage","tag-toys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}