Shawnimals' Shawn Smith on the huggable Lonely Dollop
You'd be lonely if you were feces, too.
Welcome to Defend Your Taste, wherein Chicago’s cultural curators go to bat for the art they love. In addition to selling Wee Ninjas and Pocket Staches, Shawnimals, a local designer-toy company founded in 2001 by Shawn Smith, sells the Lonely Dollop. Translation: plush poop with eyes and a mouth. The A.V. Club took Smith to task.
The A.V. Club: You sell adorable poop to children. Explain yourself.
Shawn Smith: It is true. We try to take pre-existing things, however silly or mundane or disgusting as they may be, and put our spin on it. With the Lonely Dollop, it was always a matter of, "Okay, this is obviously a pile of poop." But we're calling it a dollop on purpose, and people don't always get it. They think it's maybe chocolate or ice cream, and that's great. That means we're doing our job right. But if you perceive it as a pile of poop, you can see why it's lonely and why nobody wants to give it a hug. But if you take it a step further and you think it's sad and you want to give it a hug, that means you want to give poop a hug, which is even funnier, I think.
AVC: You just called a dollop, but it's definitely poop. Correct?
SS: I will not deny it.
AVC: Have you gotten negative reactions to it?
SS: It's kind of funny. We have the Lonely Dollop, which is kind of the Original Poop, or the O.P., or the O.D., the Original Dollop, but we have a spin-off called the Ninja Dropping. For whatever reason, there are people who don't want to have anything to do with it, like, "No thanks." And the Ninja Dropping is the same way. People either love it and are laughing or they're like, "Can I trade this in? Can I return this? Ehh, I don't want it." It's like it really is poop or something and they don't want to touch it.
AVC: There's definitely a market in Japan for poop toys. Is that where the idea for the dollop came from?
SS: Well, it was inspired by everyday life. It's one of those things that you have to experience, and it was a funny thing to take this object that nobody wants to have anything to do with and personify it and make it endearing.
AVC: Is it a hit with the kids?
SS: Yeah! A parent will buy it for their kids, and the kid will take it and hold it and walk around with it, and that's their little buddy. That's awesome.
AVC: So why should people go for the plush, personified poop instead of the realistic plastic poop that you can get at a magic shop?
SS: There's a very distinct difference between what we do and what some of that stuff is. We design it in a simple manner where people can identify it as something, but at the same time it's a character in its own right. We're giving people enough so they can identify it, but not so much that they can't put their own personality into it.
AVC: By featuring them at the Renegade Craft Fair Holiday Sale recently, were you encouraging people to give poop as holiday gifts?
SS: [Laughs.] Yes, that's exactly what I want. It's better than coal.
AVC: So it should be a substitution for coal as a Christmas punishment?
SS: Yeah. In fact, you can send it to your enemies instead of raw fish.
AVC: But why do you seriously think it's a good gift to friends and family?
SS: Everyone kind of feels that way every once in a while. Maybe somebody who's feeling a little sad during the holidays can identify with it. It's like listening to the blues. [Laughs.] It always reminds you that it could be worse.
