Off-Brand: Universal Studios Hollywood and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

*carefully peeks inside the blog*

Wow, that dust built up faster than I thought it would. What has it been, six weeks? I'm going to need to get a crew in here. Or just rebrand it as a urban exploration/haunted house blog. But for now, this:

Geographically speaking, I should be a Universal gal. The house I grew up in is about a 25-minute drive from Universal Studios Hollywood, and nowadays I live even closer—if I could get up to the roof of my apartment building, I could probably see the park. But the pattern was established in my childhood and I am pretty ride-or-die for Disneyland.* I think I've been to You Ess Aitch about...ten times. In my life. Until very recently, all my trips preceded my theme park blogging life, which is why I have mentioned Universal only in passing.

Until now.

This past Memorial Day weekend, I finally went back in order to finally see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We probably could not have timed it better—we were anticipating insane crowds due to a) the holiday, and b) the fact that everyone was saving their Disneyland trips for the next weekend—but attendance was actually pretty light. Maybe the weather kept people away (it was the chilliest, dampest Memorial Sunday I can personally remember. I wore layers), or maybe the Universal fans were holding off until the Jurassic ride opens back up. We got to do everything we wanted to do, some of it more than once.

I shrieked at the top of my lungs in full view of an auditorium crowd. I had my reasons.

After-Action Report: 5 Cool Custom Gifts You Can Get At Disneyland

We can start thinking about Christmas shopping now, right?

Once upon a time, strange as it may seem, Disneyland was considered a prime shopping destination. The park was chock-a-block with unique shops selling lines of merchandise that could be found literally nowhere else. There was a candle shop on Main Street, an antique shop in New Orleans Square, and the Guatemalan Weavers operated out of the Adventureland Bazaar. This all changed in the Nineties, when Archdemon Pressler decided it would be more efficient to just stuff the park with the same stuff being sold in every large mall in the country via the Disney Store. But even the machinations of a suit-wearing hellfiend couldn't completely eliminate the park's uniqueness, and to this day, there are quite a few distinctive, customizable, and surprisingly affordable items available at Disneyland's specialty shops and kiosks.

Here are just five that would make awesome holiday gifts for the special people in your life.

After-Action Report: Pin Collecting/Trading

I don't know what it is about the pins. It might be simply that they're cute, affordable, don't take up much space, and come in such a staggering variety that you're bound to find something that appeals to you. Got a favorite character, favorite ride, favorite holiday, favorite sport? There's a pin for that! With new ones released on a weekly basis, not to mention the special editions, mystery boxes, and whatever else they scheme in the smoke-filled rooms of Disney Marketing, there are so many pins. Even if you could afford it, you'd never be able to collect them all.

And I don't know about you, but that's a big relief to me, because it means I am under no obligation to try.

I exaggerate. I wouldn't say I've ever been into pin collecting. If I see one I adore, I will usually get it, but that rarely happens these days. I mostly got it out of my system back in the mid-2000s—you know, around the time of the 50^th Anniversary, possibly the single most rewarding time to be a Disneyland fan in my lifetime—but that was enough for me to build up a reasonably sized collection.

I've never actually traded for a pin. Ever. I have one that I bought on eBay, because it was already out of production by the time I discovered that I really wanted it. Everything else in my stash came from a Disney theme park pin store, sometimes through the intermediary of a friend who gave it as a gift.

So I might not be the most qualified person to talk about this. But did you know there's no licensing process for blogging? Strange but true!

Actually, I'll come clean: this is mostly an excuse to show off my pin collection. Photos and explanations under the break!

Er...fair warning: these are not good photos. They were taken in the decidedly nonprofessional setting of my apartment, using the sub-amateur equipment that is my phone, against the completely ad-hoc backdrop of my coffee table. And I was not always able to wrangle the flash very well.

Armchair Imagineering: Disneyland Merch That Should Exist

On this blog, perhaps more often than I should, I sometimes wind up speculating about Disneyland merchandise that I wish existed, from LEGO sets to plastic figurines to more LEGOs. Considering that I really can't justify purchasing a lot of the totally awesome goods that already do exist,* it's probably gross folly for me to keep imagining more, but you know, I just can't help myself. I'm not a terribly ambitious person, but if I can prompt just one person to post that Futurama meme—you know the one—it will be a point of pride.

Thus far, I have focused on Disneyland-based toys that I wish existed, because a) I am a giant nerd who never really outgrew toys, b) toys are usually not very expensive, whereas collectibles intended for grown-ups can be prohibitively so, and c) Disneyland and toys go really well together. The park sells gobs of plush animals and action figures and pretend weapons and children's costumes, some of which are even specific to Disney theme parks. For this post, I plan to branch out from that, but I'm kind of freewheeling it, so we'll have to wait and see what all I come up with.

Armchair Imagineering: PVC Figurines

(Tip of the hat to fellow-blogger and commenter Cory Gross, whose recent post about his kitbashed Disney board game Talismouse started a conversation which led to this post.)

This is going to be a bit of a different Armchair Imagineering post than the usual. Instead of sharing my grand ideas for rides, attractions, and holiday overlays, this one is about...souvenirs. Merchandise. Swag.

Souvenirs are obviously a big part of Disneyland, but most of the ones available seem to revolve around Disney's film and television IPs. It's not difficult to see why this is: It's easier to sell people stuff they recognize than stuff that might be brand-new to them. Tourists are having a terrific time at the park, to be sure, but they might not be falling in love with the individual attraction characters to the extent that they're willing to blow their memorabilia budget on Hitchhiking Ghosts when that Winnie the Pooh plush is right there, promising to make them feel like a kid again. So there's a lot more of the latter than the former lining the shelves.

Then, too, most of the merchandise that specifically references the park treats Disneyland* like a holistic entity, with little attention paid to its individual components. If you had only tee-shirts and picture frames to go by, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that the place consisted only of a castle with animated characters cavorting around it:

Celebrating 60 Years of Painfully Generic Branding

More specific items exist, of course...but the execution is inconsistent. There are pins, if you're into that sort of thing, and the odd plush toy. Beyond that, things start to get pretty pricey. At the low end, a handful of the popular Ear Hat Ornaments are based on rides, but they're twenty-five bucks a pop, making it a daunting task to build a collection. That, and they're Christmas tree ornaments based on Mickey Mouse ear beanies, meaning that the rides in question are not being allowed to stand on their own as souvenirs. The “purer” the attraction merchandise gets, the more expensive it gets. If you love more than one ride for its own sake, but you're not rich, it can be all but impossible to express your love via knickknacks.