Mistic Pets

Welcome to Issue 56
Created by The Mistic Pets Team

Toys!: A Day with Mistica’s Most Fun Mericai, Tara
Written By Metaphor

“Nobody is ever too old for a good toy!” Tara, owner of Mistica’s favorite Toy Factory, says as she shelves a recent shipment of Sliinkeroos. She takes inventory, noting with great care that there are a dozen red Sliinkeroos, seven rainbows, ten purples, and…no yellows?

“How odd,” Tara says, scratching her head. “I was sure I ordered at least five of them. I know yellow isn’t our most popular color, but variety is a necessity if you’re going to take part in a business like this. Where would the fun be otherwise?”

And indeed—one quickly learns just by stepping into the whimsical store that the young shop owner takes variety very seriously. More important, she prides herself in keeping her toys in quality condition. Wind-up toys stand still and dignified on high shelves, as if to avoid the enthusiastic but often clumsy grabbing hands of young shoppers. Furthermore, every morning Tara polishes every trophy, rearranges her display of Flingy Spiders, and combs the hair of every Scout doll. It’s her way of “ensuring perfection, the very best for [her] customers.”

The hand puppets, on the other hand, welcome window shoppers and intent customers alike to put on a puppet show right in the middle of the store. A cardboard box theater stands before a plush carpet often occupied by a small but invested audience of children who have wandered off from their parents, parents who are weary from hours of birthday or holiday shopping. Sometimes Tara herself will put on quite the production, her most popular being “The Mericai Jester and the Comeil Juggler.”

“It’s a real hit, often a great sales opportunity as well,” Tara says—or rather, her Mericai puppet relays to me in a soft but oddly masculine voice. “On a typical show day—where I, er, she puts on four shows throughout the morning and afternoon—she sells, on average, 100 of each hand puppet. The Mericai and Comeil, I mean.”
But the puppet shows are just one of Tara’s many toy-related passions. She is currently working on her own toy line.

“I don’t want to give too much away. It’s a work in progress, you know!”

Comments

Written By Havok

A fun read! It makes me think of a field reporter doing an interview on a news show. c:

Written By Immortal

Great article. :)

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