Clip Or Keychain, Is There A Difference?

I used to have the opinion that anything with a clip type attachment wasn't really a keychain. In my mind, keychains were designed to store keys, while clips were designed to hang from backpacks or purses. Clips were glorified zipper pulls, as far as I was concerned, and didn't belong in my collection. However, my narrow, black-and-white viewpoint did allow for some grey areas. If something had a traditional split ring along with a clip type attachment, like the example below (made by Applause) of Piglet from Disney's Winnie The Pooh popping out of a watering can, then I still considered it a keychain.

Sometimes I even took the clip attachment off, if it was one of those large, plastic clips. At the time, I was still set on earning a World Record for the World's Largest Keychain Collection, and I think I was worried that at some future date someone was going to challenge me and say that something 'didn't count' because it wasn't really a keychain.

Then something happened that threw a monkey wrench into my whole system. Basic Fun Inc. began producing their licensed keychains with a new type of attachment that had more in common with a clip than a traditional split ring, yet the packaging still labeled the items as keychains. The "Birthday Barbie" keychain shown below is one such example.

I'd been collecting Basic Fun Inc.'s keychains for a long time, starting with their Barbie line, and this change threw me for a loop. I still loved Basic Fun's products. The question was, were they really still keychains, or had they become something else?

I eventually decided that, if the product packaging said that they were keychains, then they were keychains. Besides, the new attachment was different enough from a more traditional "lobster clasp" style clip that I could sort of convince myself that they were two different things. However, I still keep any keychains I own that only have a clip type attachment in a separate box, just in case.

Signed, Treesa