Meet Scruffy, Jacob’s very first Webkinz toy. He got Scruffy for his 5th Birthday from a preschool friend. Webkinz are stuffed animals that come with codes so you can play with their alter egos online. It’s fun, safe, and more educational than I thought it would be.

From 2007 09 15 Jacob 5th Birthday

Once we signed him up for Webkinz World online, it opened up quite a world of computers for Jacob. Grammy Vollmer had fun buying Jacob several additional Webkinz, along with several birthday, Christmases, Easters, and preschool graduations later, Jacob’s up to 21 of these toys. Plus clothing for the toys, carry cases, zipper pulls, Christmas ornaments, and even a mouse pad at our desktop!

Timmy also has several, as we’ve all seen him toting around his favorite Webkinz, Thomas the Yellow Lab:

From 2008 06 21 DriveToPA_Beilers_ThomasStrasburg

Jacob’s original Webkinz, Scruffy the Golden Retreiver, was accidentally run through the washer/dryer a few months ago, and it was pretty mangled up. It looks nice and clean, but Scruffy’s head stuffing was all pushed to his body.

Jacob recently is on this phase where he rotates through which animals to sit up on his bed at night. Both boys love their animals, we put most of them in wicker baskets in one corner of their room. Jacob decided to give props to some of the animals he’s been ignoring lately, and Scruffy appeared last night. We explained why we think Scruffy has an empty head and Jacob took him to bed. All seemed well.

But then about an hour later, Jacob was back downstairs in tears — he had a bad dream about Scruffy getting unstuffed. About 5 minutes of comforting, cuddles and reassurances that Mommy would re-stuff Scruffy the next day, and Jacob headed back to bed.

So today I broke out my mending supplies and set forth to open up Scruffy.

And I was slack-jawed at what I saw….

From 2010 02 26 Webkinz stuffing?

I pulled FOUR pieces of knee-hi stockings out of Scruffy’s torso! I redistributed the poly-fiber stuffing that got pushed around and then put back the stockings. Sewed Scruffy back and he’s better…but clearly still traumatized from the trip through the washer and dryer. Jacob’s happy enough with it, I guess.

So…stockings to stuff Webkinz. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. I posted the above photo on Facebook and if you’re a Facebook member you can see all the comments generated. For anyone wondering, I didn’t stick the stockings up to my nose to check for odors or anything, but from the brief inspection of the stockings, they looked all crumpled up as if they’re fresh out of the packaging. That was encouraging.

My guess is that the factory in China that makes these animals solicits for the mistakes out of the pantyhose factory next door. Recycling in its own “special” way.

So there, the cat is out of the bag…I did a web search to see if anyone else had discovered or mentioned this, but so far my web searches have yielded nothing.