OVERVIEW: Sylvanian Families

The Sylvanian Families were small, anthropomorphic, flocked animal toys that were released in 1985. Impressively, they have not stopped being made, despite a name change (here in the US) to Calico Critters in 1993.

I loved the Sylvanian Families when I first saw them and quickly amassed the Timbertop family, seen here to the left. The families were sold individually, but also in sets of mother, father, younger sister and younger brother. I bought the four pack of Timbertops, plus the older sister and brother, both grandparents and one baby.

I played with these guys a lot, as you can tell from the stretched out elastic on their poor clothes!

The Slydale foxes were my next family purchase and these were my childhood favorites. Buster the brother had a habit of getting into mischief and frequently tooled around in Barbie's Ferrari. Sister Scarlet stole Megan's (from My Little Pony) shoes and has worn them for years. You can see the pink peeping out from under her skirt.

I also bought several of the babies. Charity the raccoon was about as bad as Buster when it came to troublemaking. Misty Waters is the older beaver sister and the only older character I bought from a family that wasn't the Timbertops or Slydales.

The last family I got in childhood was the Treefellow owl family. I didn't find out until much later that other countries got owl triplets, while the US got owl twins. Why were we cheated out of an owl? Heh. The one we didn't get was all grumpy, too, and that's just cute.

I did want one more family, the black moles, but I never got them.

Many years later, I randomly started buying Sylvanians again. I imported the badger and otter families, as well as picking up some random ones here and there. The clothes became way more detailed over the years! My otters, the Vandykes, are extremely well-dressed. I remembering buying the monkey boy and girl in a small store in New York City. That may actually be what started me on recollecting. It would make sense.

I made up an American Girl-esque line of anthropomorphic dolls that Abby, my Ellowyne Wilde Purple Rain doll, collects. It's called the Arcadian Girls. That's how I ended up with several random characters that aren't part of families, including a lovely white ermine sister that Abby always holds.

My buying didn't last for long, but I still pick them up now and then. I always bring them home when I see them at thrift stores, so I have one adult hedgehog that I found shortly after moving down here, and a bunch of other random ones that I got just this past month at Goodwill.

And many long years later, I finally own the McBurrow mole family! They just arrived today and I'm celebrating by writing this entry. I had to clean them up a bit, since the former owner obviously displayed them on a shelf and they were in gorgeous condition, but dusty.

So that is my Sylvanian collection and my history with the line. This is a very long-lived toy line, so I stuck with my own experiences with it. I can't even begin to try to write out its entire history, which spans several countries and over thirty years. The information is there if you Google, but it's not the easiest to find. I tried looking up the Treefellow names and what I found are not what I remember, although it's possible I just changed my owls' names, because the kids have some pretty silly official names.

PHOTO CREDITS: All mine.