Always "little guys"

 One of the things I've always liked, from early childhood, have been what I now call "little guys" - small figures, mostly of animals or anthropomorphic creatures. I like having them around to look at.

When I was a kid, I had a lot of these. Sometimes I would (carefully! so as not to lose it or have a teacher confiscate it - I never played with them in class) carry one in a pocket, just as a reminder, just as a reassurance. My mom referred to them as "pocket friends," and my parents never made A Deal about it (some people's parents absolutely would, and would ban their kids from it). I don't know. It just brought me comfort.

At home - or at recess, if other friends had brought small figures - I would play with them. Moving them through elaborate stories I made up, or sometimes building "houses" out of either Lego or out of small boxes (shoe boxes were much-coveted in my household). 

At some point I stopped "playing" in that sense, but I kept the little guys (well, most of them). Put them up on shelves, repurposed wooden fruit crates by nailing thin bits of lath in to serve as shelves, and so on. 

Most of them are (I admit) still in storage at my mom's house; I did retrieve a few over the years. 

But I've also bought more; here are a couple recent "little guys"

Smurfs were just such a Thing when I was like 11 and 12. The shop that had them used to sell out early on, and it was often impossible to find the desirable ones (like Smurfette) and you had to be lucky to go in when they had a new shipment. Eventually the "cool kids" outgrew them and I was able to find the ones I wanted more easily. Back then I liked the more "neutral" position ones - the better to play with, or fit into the little houses. But as I buy them as an adult, I like the more distinctive poses - this ice skater (who fell down) is my most recent purchase, because he's amusing.

I need to put up a little shelf so I can line up all the ones I have. I haven't even brought back the ones up at my mother's house.

I think about being that age: 11 or 12 and just on the cusp of being a teenager. And very concerned about how I was perceived, and being afraid of looking babyish or weird, and so I eventually stopped talking about collecting Little Guys with other people. 

I do remember when a couple of the big early-80s "properties" came out - Strawberry Shortcake, and My Little Pony, and Care Bears. 

I didn't particularly care for My Little Pony back then - they all looked alike to me (same pose more or less, though I guess you could argue that the Smurfs were pretty much all the same, except for Papa Smurf and Smurfette). I did like Strawberry Shortcake and I bought a doll of her, I just liked the idea of a small, jointed doll (though her articulation is much more limited than, for example, the Creatable World kids) and a doll that represented a KID. I never got into Barbie because I couldn't relate to her - a grown up, impossibly well put-together (my hair was always a mess), and the clothes thing didn't appeal to me. (Also, I was prime Barbie age during the "Malibu" era, and swimsuit clad dolls were even LESS interesting to a landlocked kid like me).

I secretly wanted a Grumpy Bear but never asked for one because of being afraid of looking babyish. I have two now - the giant Build-a-Bear reproduction, and a much smaller one that I sometimes carry with me when I travel.

And I've been collecting Ponies for a while; I started out being a fan of the 2010 reboot show (sometimes called "G4" for Generation 4) but then I began buying the vintage ponies.

And some new re-imaginings. There's a much-loved-by-collectors and impossibly-hard-to-find Japanese line of early 80s ponies from Takara, where they have a TOTALLY different design - much smaller and rounder, and they are bipedal rather than walking on all fours. Kind of, "what if Hello Kitty but a pony?"

Recently one of the reproduction companies (HQG1C for High Quality Generation 1 Customs) made a reissue/re-imagining of these, including a baby version, and I bought two:

 

 They don't come officially named, but I call mine Muffins (the grey one with blond hair - Muffins was one of the alternate names for the wonky-eyed pony more fans called Derpy) and Moondancer (white with pink mane; she is close to the colors of the original Moondancer).

The hair isn't *perfect* and I'm not good enough at styling it to make it go into curls or something. Maybe at some point I will try wetting it down and using chenille stems as curlers, and see if I can get a set into it. 

But yes; I've always liked Little Guys (or Little Gals, I guess)