#EdgarHOF - Day 51

Hello and happy Christmas Eve and first day of Hannukah and just Thursday, if that’s your jam. Today is December the twenty-fourth, and I am longing to be up north, as the lesser-played introduction to the song goes. (A fun fact about me is between 13 years of Catholic school and a great many Community Thea-trah productions, I know basically every Christmas song there is to know, including all their weird verses, like when We Three Kings takes a turn for the real dark.) So this series has only one more week to go! December 31 the most lollygagging of the voters will be sending off their ballots, and we will close up shop here at #EdgarHOFLLHQ. So prepare for a week of me whack-zinging all the greatest hits at you, literally and figuratively.

In the Frightening Edgar Memorabilia series, we have covered a great number of horcrux-y objects thus far, from prison tattoo Russian nesting dolls to the anatomical insult of the Edgar duck, but I have saved up this special one for last. Let us uncork this fine vintage from the year 2000 and breathe deeply of its scent of plush-covered horror and chunky zebra highlights. Wait did I say zebra? Or...

(This little pearl is available on eBay for your purchasing delight. Still in original packaging! Breathe some pre-2016 air!)

I know what you’re thinking. Kate, you’re thinking, what makes this more terrifying than the bear your talked about in this series the other week? The answer is simple. This manages to take the bear, already a high level of terrifying, and twist that dial all the way up to 11, and then yank that dial off and use it to start a gasoline fire. All the same creepy facial features and hat-to-ear problems are here, but with a little soupçon of something extra. Computer, enhance!

The mouth, while looking like two mealworms squaredancing, isn’t great, but at least it’s not that nuclear-salmon pink we’ve seen in other iterations. No, the true terror here is in the eyes. Try this: move your device around. The eyes follow you, don’t they? They are never not looking at you. To invoke another lowkey creepy Christmas song, they see you when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake, they dream of sucking away your immortal soul and imprisoning you in this cheap plush homunculus.

But the thing that really gives this the nod over the bear is the fact that it’s not a bear at all. As the more astute among you have noticed, it’s a tiger. What? I remember when I first saw this; my brain kept stubbornly ignoring the 11 branded on the chest and trying to match the face to...anything tiger-related (“Why would Safeco be giving out a Dean Palmer toy?”). A tiger is such a weird choice for Edgar, specifically, who was neither fast nor fierce nor particularly orange. If I think of “what animal is Edgar Martinez,” I think of something graceful but slow, and certainly an herbivore. I don’t know why this is true, it just is, okay. Whatever it is, it’s not a tiger. And then it’s got that weird 11 on its chest like it’s something out of NASCAR. Stop confusing sports! And mascots! Everything about this is confusing, and for that it earns my vote for the worst/weirdest piece of Edgar memorabilia.

(If there is a real story behind this, even one as loosely connected as the duck, please drop it in the comments for my own edification. If you need me, I will definitely...not...be watching this auction.)