For those of you unfamiliar with Hardship, it’s a small town in Vermont populated by your average small-town weirdos, some of whom are witches. Magic is real, and so is time travel and teleportation, though none of these are really relevant to the Toy Shop Adventures.

All of these dolls are customized 1:6 scale action figures, about 12″ (30 cm) tall or less. Qingting, with the skateboard and historical Chinese clothing, is a Pleasant Company/American Girl Girls of Many Lands Spring Pearl. GOMLs were a line of 9″ dolls, sculpted by Helen Kish, wearing detailed, high-quality, accurate historical outfits and wigged hairstyles. They were each accompanied by a book that centered around the character and her experience in her country during historically significant times. Characters hailed from Ethiopia, China, India, Yupik territory [in present-day Alaska], etc., but the most popular [and therefore expensive] of them is the step-dancing Irish redhead. I have the kid from India and the kid from France coming, so you may see them in future installments, although probably redressed.

The very creatively named PJ [in pajamas] is a recent Mattel Barbie Looks head on an MGA Rainbow High body. She’s wearing Robin Sterling’s amazing pajamas!

I was trying to come up with hilarious reasons that Qingting would need three dogbots and PJ would be in her pjs, but then I decided it was funnier if the reasons were left to the imagination. I do have an answer, however, for the reason that the mini figure in the gravy boat [actually a curry boat] appears: because she and her friends amuse me.

Remember how I said that lots of the stuff in the toy shop is gachapon, or miniatures from Japanese vending machines? The dogbots are a perfect example. If they look familiar, it’s because they are small plastic representations of Sony AIBOs, or robotic toy dogs, produced between 1999 and 2006.