New Nostalgia: colette Brings Mr. Men & Little Miss to France
|Parisian wonder-store, colette, has licensed up a host of products based on Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men and Little Miss characters. I loved those little square Mr. Men books when I was a kid, and 40 years after they came into existence, they still look great to me.
In his lifetime, Hargreaves wrote 46 Mr. Men and 33 Little Miss books, and the books went on to be translated into 20 different languages. One of those languages was French, and colette has a full supply of the books
After Hargreaves passed away in 1988, his son, Adam took over writing and drawing the characters. Mr. Men lore tells us that Mr. Tickle, the first of the Mr. Men characters, was created by Hargreaves Sr when Adam, then age 6, asked his father what a tickle looked like. Tomorrow, Wednesday, December 5th, from 4PM-5PM Paris time, Adam Hargreaves will be signing the Mr. Men and Little Miss books at colette. Little Miss Sunshine is also rumored to be making an appearance.
colette slapped the simple, single-faceted archetypal characters onto tons of merch, from mugs and glasses to figurines and plasters (which is British for Band-Aids). I want one of everything! The collection is now available online. Click through for a few of my favorites. And don’t forget everyone’s favorite parody book covers, the neurotic Mr. Men!
A lot of Hargeaves merch has been available in the US for a while now. Plush, mugs, cell phone covers, toys, blankets, etc.
Hi Mew! It’s great to see the Hargreaves characters stateside. I got extra excited about them being at colette in Paris because 1) It puts them into a ‘designer’ context and 2) I’m totally immature so some of the translated names turn me into Mr. Giggles.