Indie Squid Kid

Yeah, I know, I’m a few days late, but Happy New Year!!! I probably say this every year, but I have a feeling that 2010 will be the Year of the Cephalopod. (Well, I don’t say that about 2010 every year, but you know what I mean.)

My week offline, while a pleasant change of pace, has resulted in a large backlog (well, larger than normal) of material for the blog. So, let’s start with a trio of octopuses I spotted at the Antropologie store at my local mall.

These De Vincennes Dinner Plates are Antropologie exclusives by artist Nathalie Late. They are $24 each and are also available at the Anthropologie website.

Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities by John M. Carrera.

When I was a kid I was always fascinated by the illustrations in the dictionary. I used to make up stories, often about a zoo that put all their animals in alphabetical order and you traveled through it in a series of similarly organized vehicles. Anyway, this book contains over 1,500 engravings from 19th century editions of the Webster’s dictionary. And yes, they are arranged alphabetically.

List price $35.00. Also available at Amazon.com.

Lastly, we have The ABC of Animals Activity Book by the North American Bear Company. It contains a cute little plush animal for each letter of the alphabet. O is, of course, for Octopus, and well…that’s all that matters isn’t it?

List price $75.00. Also available at Amazon.com.

We had a marvelous Christmas here at ISK headquarters, and if you celebrate I hope you did too! This year was Kid Indie Squid Kid’s first Christmas, and even though he is a little too young to know what was going on, it was still very exciting. Family came to us, so we didn’t have to worry about traveling with the baby, and that turned out to be ideal, because I seem to have the virus and/or secondary bacterial infection that WILL NOT DIE.

It will come as little surprise that there were a number of cephalopods underneath our Christmas tree. Here’s a rundown of all the loot…

• Imaginext 3-Headed Sea Dragon Gift Set
• Imaginext Ocean Squid
• Arkham Horror: Innsmouth Horror Expansion (by Fantasy Flight Games)
• orange googly-eyed plush octopus
• Young Mad Scientist Alphabet Blocks (by Xylocopa from ThinkGeek)
• polymer clay tentacle pendent/ornament (by bunny X productions)

Well, I think that’s it for now. I’ve been unplugged for a week so I got to ease back into things, you know?

A Plush A Day: Day 2 Baby Socktopus, originally uploaded by Futuregirl_LeahRiley.

We interrupt Action Figure Week to bring you this really cute hand-made one-eyed plush octopus. It was yesterday’s entry in Leah Riley’s Plush a Day Challenge. That’s right, Leah is making a new plush toy every day until she runs out of ideas or scrap material. Which ever comes first!

Follow her progress at Leah’s Stuff.

First there was the Bearsharktopus, but now we see the gentler, fuzzier side of Ursine/Cephalopod hybridization.

Ursapus by Everyeskimo

Everyeskimo posted this wonderful creation to her blog on Friday, and it was apparently for sale in her Etsy shop. However, it must have been snapped up instantaneously, because by the time I got there Friday afternoon it was nowhere to be seen!

Coincidentally, Kid Indie Squid Kid was trying out his new bear costume over the weekend!

I’m not saying you have to decide which is the cutest, but if I did, I think you’d know the correct answer…

Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, baby Shoggoth

Lovecraft’s Mythos has never been warmer and fuzzier than Toy Vault’s plush Cthulhu line.  Since the line debuted in 2000, they have produced a wide variety of stuffed Lovecraftian monstrosities, including several variations of the Big C himself. Quite a few are out of print (such as the Nyarlathotep and Shoggoth shown above), but I imagine most of them can be found online if one looks hard enough.

Incidentally, a Toy Vault Cthulhu hand puppet is the star of the video podcast Calls For Cthulhu.

Toy Vault also made this vinyl Cthulhu figure (shown here with some of his favorite books), but it too is no longer in production.

Here is the contents of yesterday’s mystery package—a specimen of the seldom seen terrestrial cephalopod commonly known as the Tufted Cuddlestache. Natalie Metzger is the world’s leading expert on Cuddlestache biology and natural history, and the following account is from her website, The Fuzzy Slug (where you can also see one of the only known photographs of a Tufted Cuddlestache in the wild):

Extremely rare and elusive, the Tufted Cuddlestache is native to the dense temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest.  It was believed that they were hunted to extinction for their luxurious mustaches, which were used in the making of novelty stick-on mustaches and eyebrow replacements. However, while searching for Sasquatch in the remote backwoods of Washington state, field scientist, Dr. Crumpen Von Ludwig,  stumbled upon a small surviving population of the Tufted Cuddlestaches. Little was known about them as the last known living specimen died in 1910. He discovered that they were quite friendly and unafraid of man. Whether that was from isolation, or natural behavioral traits, studies so far have been inconclusive.  Since this great discovery, a  breeding program has been established by Washington State University in order to help restore wild population numbers and to gain valuable knowledge about the behavior and biology of these wonderful creatures. Currently, wild numbers are still very low (estimates are somewhere around 20 breeding pairs) and the Tufted Cuddlestache is listed as critical on the endangered species list.

In addition to being a reknowed cuddlestache-ologist, Natalie is also an artist, cartoonist, and photographer. She designed the Indie Squid Kid logo, and the famous “Bourbon Drinking Squid.”

Mr. Caissy from Accounting, originally uploaded by Bekathwia.

Sighted on BoingBoing.

If you happen to be one of the three people on the planet not familiar with boingboing.net, it is your one-stop-shop for all that is wonderful on the web–things both relevant and irrelevant. Squids obviously fall into that category. I’ve previously posted a news story from BoingBoing here, and below is a mere smattering of other squid-related posts.

Giant squid cake
Giant squid sex: violent, tangled, and deeply weird
Edible squid postcards

Today is my first Father’s Day as Indie Squid Dad, and it seems like the perfect occasion to introduce you to my Very Good Excuse for taking so long to resume this blog.

Meet Kid Indie Kid Squid (a.k.a. Commander Awesome)! He’s hanging out with a portion of my plush cephalopod collection. They’ll all be his one day, so it seemed best to begin the acclimation process early! Each of these stuffed toys will eventually make an individual appearance here in the blog, and I’m sure I have another box of them somewhere…

Kid Indie Squid Kid is wearing an Ahou Octu bodysuit (don’t call it a “Onesie,” Gerber has that trademarked!) by Finny’s Greens.