Plush | dog:Puppy Surprise

Hasbro thought up the Puppy Surprise line of toys (some references call the puppies "dolls") in the 1990s perhaps as a means of teaching youngsters where puppies come from. Based on the Hasbro toy, puppies come from the mother canine's tummy, held within by a tidy strip of velcro that ran the length of the mom's torso. So, Hasbro maybe doesn't exactly offer scientific accuracy, but it does communicate the idea of a litter. The surprise of the toy was that a youngster did not know how large the litter was until the toy was purchased and removed from its packaging and its torso opened up. Hasbro advertised that the litter might contain three, four, or five little pups. Of course every child assumed that her mom dog had the five puppies. But Hasbro made clear in its marketing that only one in five toys had four or five pups. The rest, of course, had just three. So perhaps the real lesson kids learned from Puppy Surprise was to how to live with disappointment.