I recently found a Jellycat unicorn at a store in my area, and absolutely had to have it.
It's strange to think about now, as unicorns have become such a commonplace, popular thing, but in my childhood, unicorns were, true to form, truly a rarity.
I believe it was when I first read the book Sweet Valley Slumber Party, from one of my favorite childhood book series, Sweet Valley Kids, that I realized I didn't have any unicorn toys, aside from some hand-me-down My Little Ponies. The central storyline of the book is about two friends of the main characters who bring identical plush unicorns to a slumber party, and one gets lost during a pillow fight.
The unicorns are referenced so much throughout the story, as the girls fight and take sides over whose unicorn is the remaining one, that I became absolutely obsessed with having a unicorn plushie of my very own. It seemed absolutely criminal, as I was reading this book, that I didn't have a unicorn among my plush menagerie. I don't know if I'd ever really thought about it before, but it really hit me in that moment. And the way the girls fought over the remaining unicorn, as if it were the greatest and most important thing to ever exist, just made it feel more like I was missing out on something huge by not having one of my own.
I clearly remember turning to my mother, as we sat on the couch that night (I believe my aunt and uncle may have been there as well.) and making her promise me that the next time we were out and saw a unicorn plush, she would buy it for me.
If I recall correctly, the first time I saw a unicorn plush for sale after that was in Washington, D.C., while we were visiting family for Thanksgiving. We were in some store that had a basket of Beanie Babies for sale. This was just before the Beanie Baby hype really took over. I had a few, but the collecting craze wasn't going on yet. I remember noticing the Beanie Baby unicorn in the basket and thought of my mother's promise, but it had been a long day and my little cousins were cranky, so despite my longing for it, I didn't feel right starting up about wanting a toy in that moment. So, I walked away from it, and hoped I might find it again at a local store.
I never did, but shortly after that, Beanie Babies boomed in popularity, and it became fashionable for children around my age at the time to carry them everywhere. One such instance was at a family party at my aunt and uncle's house on my father's side. I can't remember what we were celebrating, but I brought along my favorite Beanie Baby, a black and white cat named Zip, and caught the attention of my Great-Aunt Mary, who was known for always bringing a little something for the kids when she visited, no matter the occasion.
Aunt Mary was fully invested in the popularity of Beanie Babies and talked with me for a long time about them, listening intently as I talked about which ones I had, how many of my classmates brought them to school, etc. And somehow, during the course of the conversation, I remembered the unicorn I'd seen several months before, and told her how I hoped to one day be able to find it again.
To my surprise, she smiled and asked me if I would like to have the unicorn right then. It turns out she had brought each child a Beanie Baby this time, and one of them happened to be the unicorn! I could not have been happier or more pleasantly surprised.
My obsession with unicorns only grew from there. I continued to collect every plush one that I could find, within reason. I know I had another Ty one from one of their non-Beanie Baby plush lines, and I collected a set from the old Toys 'R Us line, Animal Alley. I distinctly remember going to get my first one on my first day of spring break, whichever year that was, and feeling like it was Christmas Eve the night before.
(Not my picture, but this was one of the Animal Alley unicorns. I believe they later did another line of the unicorns in different solid colors, and I got a couple of those for Christmas that year.)
Though I never collected unicorns to the extent that I've collected other things in my life, my love for them was always there and if I stumbled across one, I would more than likely buy it. One time I traded a bunch of my own toys to my childhood best friend for an old Russ unicorn plush her grandmother had found while thrifting. I even did several unicorn-based projects in high school, including a paper mache sculpture of one, and a website design.
It's almost strange to me sometimes to look around and see how popular, and how common, unicorns have become in society now, when they were so rare and such a huge deal to me when I was growing up. Now it seems like they're just part of life, and kids today will never know the aching struggle of wanting something so badly, that didn't seem to exist.
It does my inner child good to see unicorns finally getting the attention they deserve, and I'm happy to have one among my collection once again.
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