My Grandmother was a very neat person. She became a nurse after graduating high school and later worked in VA hospital in upstate New York among patients positive for tuberculosis and never became ill. She managed an emergency room in Cleveland and kept it clean and orderly. When she was at home, she was just as organized. She did not care for clutter. She was always throwing things out or donating them. When my mother and my aunts moved out, if they did not take their childhood toys with them they ended up donated. When my mother cleaned out my grandmother’s house after her death, she found only her Chatty Cathy doll and one small case of Barbies.

Because of this my mother has taken the time to pack up and keep a large amount of my toys. My toy kitchen set is taped up next to a bag of stuffed animals in our crawlspace. Parts of my sister’s closet still have dolls and other toys put away into crates. These toys are all said to be kept so that my mother can give them to her grandchildren. Part of me thinks that it’s because she was left without many of her favorite toys that she wants to make sure that I still have mine. To be honest, I don’t think that my children are going to be interested in playing with My Little Ponies.

Having all of these toys available to me does give me the chance to crawl within the walls of my home among the pink fiberglass or into my sister’s closet to take a look at how I spent my childhood. A few weeks ago, when I was searching through old VHS tapes in my sister’s room, I took some time to look through a few of the crates. Beneath the hand puppets and doll dresses was a plastic pink case containing hundreds of colored two inch figures.

When you’re 8 years old and your allowance can afford you either one Barbie outfit or 15 of these figures at a time, the notion of quantity over quality sounds like a pretty good deal. So I ended up with over a hundred of these little plastic ladies. I have every pose and one of every color. I sat and played for hours. Why? I don’t know. Maybe once they were in their box that I kept them in, they were easier to transport than other toys. Maybe I liked the colors. After all, it was during a time when my favorite color wasn’t just pink, it was neon pink. Maybe I was just lame.

C.U.T.I.E. stands for “coolest ultra tiny individuals on earth.” It’s kind of an inaccurate description. It must have been important to establish that C.U.T.I.E. were human and from earth. Plus Butt Ugly Martians were a decade away.

C.U.T.I.E. figures are the neon female counterparts to M.U.S.C.L.E. figures. I don’t know what sort of toy designer played around with the M.U.S.C.L.E. figures and said to themselves, “Hey! You know what would be a great idea? Take these little flesh colored guys that wrestle and make them for girls!” Since girls don’t like wrestling (which might be why I was never had female friends when I was a kid) the figures were modified to be more girly. Instead of wrestling trunks and muscle poses, dresses and bad hairdos replaced them.

In the kayfabe C.U.T.I.E. world, there are no males. At all. While I’m not sure whether or not the M.U.S.C.L.E. figures were supposed to fill that role, as it stands it seems to be vagina only around these parts. Whoever created these must have a pretty warped view of forced lesbianism; it doesn’t really come off as being too cute. Maybe they were privileged to see some sort of secret ancient document about the island of Lesbos being decorated with flowers and hearts and puppies. That might have made it cute.

They’re also not “ultra-tiny”. While they are small, they are average size for fixed plastic figures. Ultra-tiny would be the way to describe the original Polly Pocket or Mighty Max toys. Well, at least they’re toys by the VH1 definition of toys which lumps anything that can be played with as a toy. I still say that Richard Pryor was the best toy.

Each of them had hobbies. Apparently there are only 4 hobbies in the C.U.T.I.E. world:

1. Music
2. Exercise
3. Fashion
4. Babies

First of all, fashion is not a hobby. If fashion is your hobby you’re probably the type of person who says that they like all sorts of music, except rap and country. So when you’re not reading the latest Nicholas Sparks masterpiece you can take your time to go to the mall and work on your hobby. Also, I would like to punch you in the face.

Second, I would like to know how there are baby C.U.T.I.E.S. if there are no males to procreate with. Regardless of how they came into existence, the children must be latchkey kids. While their mothers are busy playing music, exercising or doing fashion, they’re busy raising themselves. What a wonderful message to send to the young children playing with these that will grow up to have kids of their own. Don’t worry; you don’t need to take care of those young ones. Your own interests take precedence over whether or not little Betty gets fed.

Part of me wants to just refer to each of these as the Marches and be done with it. If I was to play with these again I could act out the general plot of most nineteenth century novels written by women. They can all vie for social positions and hope to get married to some dream man. Well, in this case, dream woman I guess.

Like any toy, there is a lot to be learned from these figures. The way they are posed, the groups they can be categorized into. Each thing can teach us a lot about the dolls and eventually about the world that they were taken from.

Let’s take a look, why don’t we?

On top of the neon colors, the other big sign that this was a toy from the 80s is that the musician C.U.T.I.E. figures ended up a 12 piece super group. Instead of getting washed up singers from the 60s or members of the Jackson family you can form your own group with 4 guitarists, two singers and someone laying down to play clarinet. I guess it’s more tiring to play that than I thought. No wonder there more tuba and percussion players in my high school marching band than clarinet players.

The music that they play must be very punk in order for them to sport Mohawks. Not only that, but they appear to need a slam dancer over there on the left. The M.U.S.C.L.E. figures were supposed to be mutants or monsters or something, maybe these little women were the missing link.

Here we can see an illustration of the female social cycle. Notice how each part is available in the set. A woman starts off her adult life pursuing her own interests being young and fit until she becomes a bride. After marriage she pops out a few kids and ends up with a body that is completely different from what she started off with. Great. I’m glad to know what my future holds: babies and a fat ass. I know a lot of feminist groups have attacked Barbie for creating an unrealistic feminine ideal, but I would rather have my daughter playing with a Barbie in heels and a lab coat that is supposed to be a doctor rather than a 2 inch plastic figure with a fat ass. Since I’m supporting Barbie I’ll strap on some pumps and an apron and go and cook up a steak for my imaginary husband now.

This was the k.d. Lang mold obviously. Nothing like sending your young child a strong message about gender bending fashion. At least if they’re going to put one of the more boyish looking C.U.T.I.E.S. in a suit, they might as well get the necktie tied right. It’s like My First Drag King!

This one likes the Bangles, I guess.

There really isn’t anything special or marvelous about a baby C.U.T.I.E. other than what I’ve pointed out before about the miracle of reproduction despite there being no males. They’re kind of like real babies. They’re dressed up and I’m sure someone would go on about how cute and adorable they are. While they may not have the same smells, they have as much function as a real child, outside of shitting their pants.

When I finally have children I’m not going to cart my baby around and talk to everyone about how fucking great it is that my kid can blink. Though I do have estrogen running through my system and I’ll probably be thinking to myself about how wonderful and beautiful I think my own child is, I wouldn’t force strangers to look at my kid. There is nothing that annoys me more than mothers that decide to go on and on about how great their babies are. No, I don’t think your kid is cute. Yes, I do mind that your kid just got spit up on my clothes.

Anyway.

There are even toddlers! There is an ice skater, a ballerina and two girls in dresses. If there had been a cheerleader in those that would have been my ideals of what I wanted to be when I was 9. An ice skating-ballerina-princess-cheerleader! Unfortunately to this day I can’t even do a cartwheel. We can all guess what happened to that dream.

That second one from the right is crying. Probably because she found out that she has two mommies and there is no chance or her every having a prince.

Oh look! It’s MTV’s Daria. She’s too sarcastic to even stand! You can always count on her to come up with slightly clever monotone quips about how stupid you are to her. Thanks for inspiring a whole generation of unfunny girls who make themselves into social outcasts into thinking that they’re clever and better than everyone else.

The makers of C.U.T.I.E. figures do give you a choice in the frame of the women. You can either have someone skinny or someone with a big butt. The only chubby ones in the set seem to be working out so that they become skinny like everyone else. But hey, big girls need love too. No discrimination in this world. It seems like the only way to work out for them, though, is to either stretch or lift weights. At least they don’t seem to be lifting one pound weights and expecting gain mass amounts of muscle.

Apparently, C.U.T.I.E. figures were supposed to be marketed towards boys. I don’t understand why that wo-

Never mind.

Congrats Dads! By giving your young boys female dolls and figurines, you can avoid those embarrassing talks that would teach your son important things to know about the opposite sex. If you were on 24 the show and didn’t say something important because you were embarrassed, you know what would happen to you? You or your son would end up dead.

Even though I ended up playing with these toys for hours at a time, it’s still kind of a let down that I didn’t play with something that was cooler. Though it’s really not too much of a surprise now that I think about it. While I had dolls with tons of outfits, I’d often opt for wrapping them up with toilet paper to create new outfits and holding them together with tape.

I’m sure that there aren’t many people who remember these plastic little ladies. When I bought these years ago I didn’t pay much money for them. Any major toy company that sells anything for $1 per 4 pack means that they are on their way to trying to liquidate their supply of this item. These toys are the kinds that end up swept under the rug and forgotten while other people my age go on about how great their Strawberry Shortcake or Transformers were. Though they may be forgotten by everyone else, I’ll still have my plastic box stuffed to the top with these cheap little neon figures that will collect dust in my sister’s closet.

Will I end up passing them onto my children so that they can and have all sorts of memories of playing with them?

No. They’re a choking hazard.