Season Of The Witch (Harry Potter Keychains)

 In popular culture, witches often get lumped into the same 'paranormal' category as vampires, werewolves, and other, frequently sinister mythological beings. Although Wicca and various 'modern-day pagan' groups have, in more recent years, made efforts to combat the age-old stereotype of equating witchcraft with devil-worship.

The seven book Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, set primarily at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is statistically the best-selling book series in history. Add to this a blockbuster film franchise based on the books, as well as "The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter" at Universal Orlando theme park, and it could be argued that Rowling's characters rank among some of the most famous magic practitioners in fiction, right up there with Gandalf from J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth or even Shakespeare's 'Three Witches'.

With Halloween fast approaching, I thought that now would be a good time to show off some Harry Potter themed keychains. I already shared a couple of 'wizarding' keychains in my "Buy What You Like" post, under the header "Pop Culture Touchstones". Also, in another previous post, I wrote about a blind bag Ron Weasley wand keychain made by Paladone Products Ltd. that I found at Dollar Tree. In that post, I mentioned how another company had released several blind box wand keychains made from metal, rather than plastic. I also hinted that I would be sharing more information in a successive post. Unfortunately, that follow-up got buried in my list of future post ideas, where I eventually forgot about it. I will attempt to make amends to my readers here, and I apologize for keeping you waiting.

The metal wand pictured above is from the "Harry Potter Collectible Keychains: Series 1" line by Se7en20. It's meant to be Ron Weasley's broken wand from the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. If you look closely at the photo, you might be able to see the molded 'Spellotape' wrapping on the wand.

This "Wingardium Leviosa" keychain is also from the same line. I actually bought this one in its original blind box, at an actual retail store. I more often buy 'blind' items used rather than at retail, so that they're pre-opened and I know exactly what I'm getting. However, this was on clearance at the time.

The Triwizard Cup keychain pictured above is from a similar collectible keychain series by Monogram International Inc., the "Harry Potter Collectors Keyring: Series 1" line. This keychain would've been a blind bag item originally. However, I bought mine secondhand.

This Hogwarts crest, labeled as a "Harry Potter Soft Touch Keyring" on the tag, is another Monogram International Inc. product. However, this item wasn't blind-packed.

Speaking of crests, here's the official emblem of Hogwarts' Hufflepuff house. Each Hogwarts house features a different animal on its crest, with Hufflepuff represented by an animal that some refer to as 'the badger of mediocrity'. However, judging by the number of times that I've walked into a Build A Bear Workshop store and found all of the Hufflepuff merchandise sold out, while merchandise for every other Hogwarts house was still in stock, I think a lot of Harry Potter fans must have a soft spot for this particular house. And in my mind, this actually makes a lot of sense. While many of us may aspire to be Gryffindors or Ravenclaws or even Slytherins, I think that deep down, most of us identify more with Hufflepuffs. Incidentally, this Hufflepuff house keychain was put out by ATA-BOY Inc.

This Lego keychain also features the Hufflepuff house emblem.

When I told my online keychain collecting friend, Heathersmoo, that I'd acquired a secondhand time turner souvenir keychain with identifying markings from Universal Orlando theme park's "The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter", Heather seemed very interested in seeing it. There's also a story behind my managing to snag this keychain from an online auction site that I think could be useful to other shoppers who buy from secondhand sites. I first stumbled across the auction listing for this time turner keychain by accident, when I typed in a search for, I believe, "hourglass keychains". The auction details stated that this keychain was an estate sale find, and I have a strong suspicion that the seller didn't know what it was actually called because neither the auction header nor the item description included the words "time turner". This may have worked in my favor, as it might partially explain why I was the only one who put in a bid. My guess is that because those crucial keywords were missing from the listing, no rival bidders were able to find the auction, despite the fact that the name Harry Potter was included in the title by the seller.

Let's shift our attention to Paladone Products Ltd., the company responsible for that "Harry Potter Backpack Buddies" blind bag wand keychain I picked up from Dollar Tree. This "Harry Potter Light Up Key Ring" is another Paladone Products item. Coincidentally, I bought this keychain from Dollar Tree as well.

I don't really know a lot about this Harry Potter name/logo keychain, since I bought it secondhand from an outdoor flea market. An online seller who also had one listed for sale stated that it originally came from Hot Topic, a store specializing in pop culture related items. But so far, I've been unable to verify this.

I hope that you enjoyed this 'seasonal' post, and Happy Fall to you all.

Signed, Treesa

'Dollar Tree' Store Finds

 Dollar stores seem to have a bad reputation in the public mind. Many people look down on them, assuming that they're all stocked with low quality, off-brand merchandise and cheap knockoffs. And then there's the fact that not all stores with the word 'Dollar' in their name actually price everything at a dollar. Places like Dollar General and Family Dollar qualify more as discount stores, since they sell things for a dollar and up. A lot of smaller, non-chain 'dollar stores' do the same thing.

The Dollar Tree chain of stores is what I would consider true 'dollar stores'. Everything they sell is priced at one dollar. I'll admit, some of the items they stock aren't the best quality. But if you need disposable party plates for a birthday celebration, or to use as palettes when working with decoupage medium the way I do, does it really matter what brand they are?

The thing I really love about Dollar Tree, however, is that sometimes they get old stock of name brand items.

Like these Harry Potter Backpack Buddies blind bag wands for example. These were made by Paladone, and if I remember correctly they were previously being sold for five dollars apiece at my local Five Below discount store.

The packaging states that there are 8 different wands to collect. I believe I've mentioned before that I tend to have bad luck with blind bags, so even at a dollar apiece I wasn't going to go crazy buying a bunch of these and risk getting mostly duplicates. But I did pick up one for my collection.

I ended up getting Ron Weasley's wand. Not one of the more elaborate designs, I'll admit, but it does have a decent amount of molded detail, considering the simplicity of the design. Just to clarify, the wand is made from a hard plastic. I know there was at least one other company making blind box wand keychains from metal, but that's a subject for another post. I'm also planning to replace the plastic clip on this with a split ring.

While I was at Dollar Tree, I picked up a Series 1 Lucky Fortune pack by WowWee as well. I forgot to photograph this in package, but each 'fortune cookie' came packed in a clear bag so buyers could see what color the 'dipped' ends were. The 'cookie' opens similar to a real fortune cookie, and inside you'll find a fortune plus 1 mystery bracelet. According to the packaging, Series 1 had 100 different bracelets that you could collect. However, it didn't really matter to me which bracelet I got, since I was more interested in the fortune cookie itself.

I ended up getting a bracelet with a unicorn charm that, according to the Collector's Guide, is Very Very Lucky. The bracelets are categorized on the sheet as either Lucky, Very Lucky, or Very Very Lucky. This seems to correspond to the supposed rarity of each charm. However, I don't know enough about this product to say for sure if there really are fewer of this unicorn charm than other charms.

Also, the charms are broken up into color coded categories that seem to match up with the different colors used for the 'dipped' ends of the fortune cookies. The categories are coded as follows: Adventure (light blue), Friendship (pink), Success (darker blue), Love (light purple), and Happiness (bluish green). The 'dipped' ends of my 'cookie' seem to be the Adventure blue color. However, according to the Collector's Guide, the unicorn charm belongs in the Happiness grouping, which again is color coded as bluish green. I wonder if this mix-up was a common problem for these Lucky Fortune packs, or if this batch was somehow defective and that's how they ended up at Dollar Tree. Or maybe the bracelet selection really is supposed to be completely random.

Incidentally, the gold tone ball chain didn't come in the pack. I added it myself to convert the cookie into a keychain.

And that's it for this keychain haul. I hope you enjoyed the post. And the next time you're near a Dollar Tree store, why not stop in and see what they have. You never know what you might find.

Signed, Treesa

(Note: This post has been in draft for longer than it should've been, and my neighborhood Dollar Tree store is already sold out of the two items I discussed here. I apologize to anyone who was planning to check the stores in their area for these specific blind bags.)