The Curious Case of George the Mu-ee

My kids love impossible toys. This Christmas, Ben was in love with He-man. I blame my husband, the dork. He had to have the box set and somewhere along the way of just showing Ben what daddy used to watch when he was a kid, Ben fell in love. So all Ben would ask for for Christmas was He-man toys. Well, that and for anything he saw on TV or in the store. But if you asked him what he wanted, without any outside stimulus, he would tell you a He-man toy, or roller skates for the ice (he's a dork too). So this was a bit of an E-bay Christmas since He-man toys haven't really been made since the 80's I think. But Grandma came through and we now have He-man, Skeletor, Battlecat, Man-Ram and some hairy thing that my husband knows the name of but I have no clue.

Now, what does this have to do with George, you ask? Well, it rather simple. We purchased a Curious George Xbox game recently and on the back there was an ad for a cute little Curious George stuffed animal that came all dressed up in a few different outfits, like Birthday George, Firefighter George, Handyman George etc. Each came with a special book that was about why George was dressed up and they all looked pretty cute. And Ben has decided that he wants one. He asks me practically every day if he can have one. He has the giggling George that he got for his first birthday and I thought that I could replace him since George has stuffing coming out of his side and is looking rather ratty but it is Mac's new favorite and she insists on carrying around her "mu-ee". So I hit the internet.

All I can find is the old George! He comes in all different costumes, and he's really cute but my kids won't like him. They are a little picky when it comes to George. Because they grew up with the movie and TV show, they only like the George that looks like the one on TV, not the one from the books (although, yes I do read the books to them, they just don't make as big an impression). So despite having 3 Georges (two old original ones and one movie one) they only play with the movie George. So I kept searching, and searching, and searching.

Finally I found reviews on them, telling me how much someone else's kid loves them, but still no one selling them. So I dug a bit more. I found out that they stopped making them in 2006 and ran out of stock in 2007 but that shouldn't be too much of a problem, as long as things are in decent enough condition, I don't care about buying second hand toys especially if they are second hand toys that make my kids happy. So I spent another hour searching site after site, George collectible sites, e-Bay, Amazon, Kijiji, freecycle, and still came up with nothing.

Then I stumbled across an article stating that during the big lead scare all the George toys were tested and all of the toys passed with flying colours, except one line which was immediately recalled. Guess which one it was. Crap.