Sylvanian Family Reunion
How PEN15 nailed a joke about a beloved toy from the 1985.
On June 23, 2018, a brand new theme park attraction welcomed its first guests. For a specific subculture of children and adult toy collectors, it was the equivalent of stepping inside Orlando’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter – a chance to roam an imagined universe, blown up to life-sized proportions on a 3,320 square meter campus.
In this case, the park put visitors in a version of midcentury Britain inhabited by bunnies, mice, otters and poodles. The animals live and work together, running ice cream shops and haberdasheries, helping each other and being nice.
If that sounds good, all you have to do is head to Comorebi Mori no Ibaraido, a theme park an hour north of Tokyo. Or, like most fans, you could buy the toys on eBay and create a world of your own, right here.
Welcome to Sylvania.
The iconic toys of the 1980s – Care Bears, Cabbage Patch dolls, Pound Puppies – all overshadowed the quiet majesty of Sylvanian Families. The Japanese toy franchise channeled 1950s Britain, dreaming up families of woodland creatures who live in miniature houses and work at shops with tiny wares. Though Sylvanian Families are less well known than some of their counterparts, by 2016 the company sold more than 150 million tiny animal figurines and 18 million buildings that can be arranged into petite town squares or vacation destinations.
The Sylvanian Families franchise, which includes toys and accompanying stories about the characters, is guided by three principles: nature, love and family. It’s exactly this rural bliss that makes Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle’s jokes about Sylvanian Families so funny, which I didn’t realize until I got curious and did some googles.
Sylvanian Families play a crucial role in the second episode of Erskine and Konkle’s new Hulu show, PEN15, in which the two comedians play middle school versions of themselves. Without giving too much away, the episode opens with the two girls playing with their Sylvanian Families toys (specifically the Hedgehog family and the now-discontinued Billabong Koala Family) as they riff an imagined dialogue that Vulture accurately calls “an utterly crude, a hillbilly soap opera.” Although the franchise encourages children to enjoy its pre-written stories about the characters – and purchase its many play sets and accessories – Sylvanian Families ultimately exists to encourage imaginative play, no matter where it takes you.
PEN15 aside, 2018 was a big year for Sylvanian Families. The franchise’s midcentury universe expanded to include its first urban environment, which features a department store and public transit. It’s inhabited by new, sleek city dwellers like a cat named Lulu who is a professional makeup artist or Stella, a rabbit fashion designer.
If these jobs seem gendered, well, they are. In The Guardian, journalist Emine Saner observes that the the mother characters come dressed in permanent aprons, which they wear as they knit, bake and tend to their homes. The fathers have far more interesting jobs in entertainment or as political leaders. Not surprisingly, fans skew female.
Despite these concerns about how the toys reinforce gender roles, the world’s largest collection of Sylvanian Families toys actually belongs to a man. At the age of seven, Jacc Batch chose Brother Hedgehog at a toy shop, sparking a lifelong obsession with collecting Sylvanian Families toys. Today, Batch is a self-employed dance instructor who still carefully tends his collection, which fills two entire rooms in his home. In 2018, Batch’s collection landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records – though it only counted 3,489 items, excluding the duplicates Batch collects because packaging varies by country. He recently spent £15,000 on a miniature carousel. (His website is also very charming.)
As you’d expect, Batch was present at a picnic celebrating the franchise’s 30th anniversary, along with his partner, Craig. He still loves the franchise (and Craig tolerates it) despite the complete absence of same-sex couples or androgynous creatures in Sylvania. And although the Tuxedo Cats (a pair of black and white cats) appeared to imply a mixed-race partnership, Batch noticed that the latest Tuxedo Cats seem to be ominously missing their black cat son. Just as children embellish their cannon play sets with bits of paper and fabric or new buildings made from cardboard boxes, they have to invent their own stories to extricate Sylvanian Families from the 1950s and dream them into a more progressive world.
Back on PEN15, Maya and Anna’s raunchy, adulterous story about their Sylvanian friends rejects the franchise’s insistence on the nuclear family and bulldozes the pre-written narrative of a desire-free mother. The girls, through their animal proxies, swear and throw milkshakes in an exploration of adult behavior. And why not? To me, it seems like exactly what Sylvania needs.
Something else
If you’ve been following Scavenger for a while, you already know that Anna Doherty is making great things. Since crafting our vulture mascot a few years ago, Anna has gone on to publish several delightful books, and the newest one is out soon from Scholastic.
Sticky follows the story of a badger who gets in a bind (literally) while wrapping a birthday present for his friend. It’ll make a great gift for young readers, so be sure to preorder it for your kids, classroom, nephews, baby showers, neighbors or any of the other curious readers in your life. Or for yourself!
If you need a book right now, check out some of Anna’s other titles, including books about the Bronte sisters, Michelle Obama, Ada Lovelace and Big Ideas for Curious Minds (an illustrated introduction to philosophy).
Just for fun
Since so many of you clicked through my bookcase link, I wanted to share an update here! It was…a little harder to put together than we expected, but not impossible, especially if you have a power drill. Here’s the finished product! Please don’t judge my taste in books. And enjoy my beloved plastic reptiles if you can spot them :)
