What souvenirs do you collect when you travel? My own particular fetishes are fridge magnets, teatowels, postcards and a more unusual collecter item— soft toys.

I call them ‘stuffies’ as in ‘stuffed toys’, but more commonly they seem to be known as ‘plushies’. Some people collect particular lines of toys (eg. Ducks or cows or Pokemon effigies). Other people take a stuffy with them on holidays and take its photo in famous places—my German friend has a crocheted potato with a big smiley face for this purpose, and I have Facebook friends who post photos of a koala, a smurf and Sponge Bob. There are several others but I’m stuffed—pun intended—if I can tell what they are. It was quite fun to go on a cruise with Potato, I must admit, to seek out iconic shots in which we could pose him. And for several months after the cruise, I was getting photos of Potato back at work, Potato doing household chores and Potato hiding on a shelf of crisps at the supermarket. They made me smile nearly as widely as Potato. He even went to Oktoberfest.

My friend had a right to be bemused by my habit of collecting stuffies symbolic of the places I visit. I googled extensively, but noone else seems to be doing it. What I mean is buying a species that is synonomous with that particular country or place, such as the boar I bought in Tuscany or the mountain goat I bought in Austria, or, less frequently, an iconic children’s character such as Doraemon from Japan or the little mole, Krytek, from Prague, or possibly a plush doll in a national costume or a mythology figure—the Loch Ness Monster from Scotland and Ogopogo from Okanagan Lake in Canada.

There are lots of posts about taking ‘plushies’ on planes and through Security and Quarantine. No doubt there are some children who are likely to go postal at the thought of their ‘lovie’ bear going through the X-ray machine.

I’ve only ever had one stuffy confiscated by Customs as I returned to Australia. The sniffer dog at Brisbane Airport sat down next to my carry-on bag in which I had a Minnie Mouse from Euro Disney (near Paris). Minnie failed the swab test and took one for the team: shegot cut open and disembowelled. They thought she might be carrying internally. Thankfully for me, she wasn’t, but that’s one less stuffy in my collection.

I’m not above buying more than one stuffy from a place. Last year, I arrived home from a rather epic trip, including aforementioned cruise on which I visited Denmark, Norway, Orkney Shetland, Edinburgh (didn’t actually buy anything there this time), Durham Cathedral and Iceland, then afterwards, Sweden, Finland, France (Normandy) and Canada. You might like to test yourself as to what came from where in the first photo. I’ll put answers under the photo in the comments. To accommodate my hobby, I take old clothes with me and throw them out as I need to. Saves on washing as well.

From left front: Shetland pony, Orkney sheep,Norwegian troll, Moomin from Helsinki, Things get confusing …
. Icelandic horse, Elk from Canada, there’s a blue dragon from Mont St Michel in Normandy and a seagull also from Normandy, Pippi Longstocking, a Dala horse and an elk in a t-shirt from Sweden, a monk-bear from Durham, a Viking from Copenhagen, a bighorn sheep, a moose, a beaver, Ogopogo and maybe some buried treasure.

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The other photos are of two of the walls in my study where stuffies vie for position with books.