THERE was this Dalmatian at Planet Me last week.
You can tell Webkinz are factory-made on an assembly line. There is no consistency to them. People have complained of animals with short or twisted legs, uneven eyes, even escaped stitching that has pulled to reveal holes. In some cases the animals don't really look as cute as they do in the posed catalogs. The Dalmatians all seemed Roman-nosed to me till I saw the one I picked out, and it had more spots than the rest.
I skipped all the traditional Dalmatian names, although this one is really close to the name of one of the puppies in Disney's 101 Dalmatians, Pepper. I toyed with naming her "Cadpig," after the runt puppy in the book (Disney made Lucky the runt), but chickened out. Interestingly enough, they used Cadpig in the live-action film and the television series.
I picked up the bear in American Greetings. I flashed back on a Disney film—anyone remember Nikki, Wild Dog of the North? It's from the early 1960s, about a trapper and his young husky who adopt an orphan bear cub. Later the dog and the bear are on their own and survive together. I did a bit of searching for the film and found out it was adapted from the 1918 novel by James Oliver Curwood, Nomads of the North. And it's even readable online.
The Family Expands
