With catchphrases including “I believe in a thing called Luuuve” and “Fire is my friend,” Stephanie™ comes with her own firewand. Combine with the Emily™ doll for refuelable firewand fun!

Of course, Stephanie™ also loves her a giant Burnsomatic candle lighter …

… and a nice big bag of Reeses Pieces.

She also enjoys locking Emily™ out of the apartment.

The Emily™ doll, incidentally, is also available. With catchphrases including “Alas the day” and “People are weird,” Emily™ has forehead-smacking, Boswell-kicking action! (She’s also willing to kick William Blake and Cornelia Funke if needed.)

Emily™ and Stephanie™ hang out with their favorite Eiffel Tower lamp …

… and their favorite voodoo doll (please don’t ask).

Stephanie™: “Hee heeee, hee heeeee …”

Emily™: <<forehead smack!>>

Put the Emily™ and Stephanie™ dolls together in an apartment and the fun–and oftentimes bizarre–times will just roll!

Thanks, Steph, for all the great memories!

In the email before this, I referenced the Great Raisin, to which Becky replies,

BECKY:

i know the GREAT RAISIN quite well, after all of the business i’ve done with him in the past few weeks, so don’t even try it. he will obviously side with me because i supply him with all of the laser guns he could ever need. so ha! beat that, if you can. >: )

f

EMILY:

Raisin armys armed with laser guns? Scary beyond all reason.

BECKY:

duh! what else would raisin armies be armed with? and duh! once again. it’s supposed to be scary beyond all reason. resistance is futile. surrender now.

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

EMILY:

I have bran flakes and an army of Mollys who will voraciously eat your raisin army. Even their meager lasers cannot withstand a Molly’s hunger for Raisin Bran!

BECKY:

Molly will be too busy to eat my raisin and laser army. I will distract her with a fake invitation to the white house to see if she likes the carpet color. you know she’ll be there. what now?

the great f who will slurp the erp

EMILY:

I will promise a lifetime supply of crackers to the Molly who eats the most Raisin Bran. They will not be able to resist, nay, not even to look at White House decor. Ooo–what now?

the unslurpable erp

BECKY:

There is a chance to escape the hunger of the Molly. While they are all distracted and on their way to Washington, D.C., my raisin army will zap all of the Mollys with their laser guns, making them forever hate raisins and anything with a significant amount of fiber. they will no longer want to eat my army or my lasers. they will, in fact, be terrified of the dried fruit and be conquered. i win. (again)

the f the f the f the f the f the f the f

EMILY:

I will lure the army of raisins into Curves, where they will be devoured by health-conscious people looking to fulfill their requirement of 5 fruits and veggies a day. Or I’ll lure the raisins into my giant industrial-sized microwave. I haven’t decided yet.

Erp eRp erP

BECKY:

whoa! if you were a health-conscious curves member would you eat a raisin bearing a laser gun? i don’t think so. and what kind of raisin army do you think that i am training? they would never step into a gigantic microwave unless, well, nevermind. think of something that might actually work this time. or don’t.

happy f laser f raisin f bran f jello f great f becky f

EMILY:

Fine. I will appoint the battle at the parking lot in front of Toys ‘R Us. But I will keep putting it off because of schedule conflicts (dentist appointments and podiatrist appointments and meterologist appointments and such) until the only time we can fight it is 5:30 a.m. on November 24th. Your raisins will realize only too late that it is the Friday after Thanksgiving and Toys ‘R Us is having a big 95% off Early Bird Sale of Insanity and will lament their ignorance as they are trampled into raisin paste on the sidewalk by masses of shoppers. And for any who try to escape, I will have attack goats.

E.R.P. (Exultant Raisin Pummeler)

BECKY:

but what will stop my raisin army from attacking your army while you are at the podiatrist and such? what kind of toys could my vicious laser-zapping raisins possibly want? aren’t the lasers enough? like my army would be sitting around in the parking lot while they could be sun bathing at the beach!!! your scheme has holes, emily, lots of holes. you could never cut it as a criminal mastermind. i could. resistance is futile.

G.R.E.A.T F. (giggling raisins eat all the foes)

Theme songs, for instance. For some reason, every Japanese cartoon has to have a theme song that may or may not be related to the content of the cartoon. This is strange to Americans, whose cartoon theme songs basically tell you the entire plot of the cartoon. That way if the simple scenarios and exaggerated characters confuse us, we can always look to the theme song to help us understand what’s going on.

Not so in Japan. If you have a cartoon about seven girls with blue hair who are trying to fly a spaceship to the Charmeleon Galaxy and make the perfect teriyaki recipe on the way, the theme song will be about riding bicycles through the snow with the boy you like and hoping he will smile at you and say hi. And unfortunately the lyrics don’t quite make sense in English. One series I’ve watched has a very catchy theme song with subtitles reading things like, “If I could be a bird, or the wind, will my dreams come true?” and “When my memories that frolicked made a pinky promise on love, ‘thank you’ distressed my heart.” (I am dead serious. That’s what the translation says.)

So one afternoon I thought I would sit down and write an anime theme song. Thirty seconds later (literally), I pushed back my keyboard and read my creation:

Like a tree, I know my true feelings
But cannot find my roots
But you are there with me
And I can smile
And we can go to the beach
Walking along the water
With pebbles in our pockets
And songs of wings in our heads
And I will cry and you will laugh
Love memory

I sent it to my sister Heidi, who is a die-hard anime fan. She laughed and then sent me the translation to another theme song I had heard. Mine actually made a ton more sense!

Then, of course, there is the extremely popular “Pokemon” series that took America by storm. Children all over the country were pitting monsters that look like fuzzy blue turtles against neckless animals with pincers coming out of their heads. This is all part of cultural awareness.

So one day Becky and I were emailing back and forth, and I happened to mention something about Lima, Peru. The conversation somehow degenerated into the following:

BECKY
Lima-chu, I choose you!

EMILY
*A pale green llama with soap powers jumps out of a ball much too small to fit its body*

BECKY
scenes continually cut from my face to your face to the strange streaks of color and then to the Lima-chu in all of its soapy glory.

EMILY
Everyone gasps three and a half times, taking turns to do so, before Lima-chu is interrupted by a commercial break.

BECKY
after countless commercials for other cartoons and unhealthy breakfast cereals, we recap all of the scene cuts and gasping. i then say something clever, such as “who will it be today, villain?”

EMILY
The villain, who has purple and orange-striped hair and a scar over one eye, merely yells “argh” in disgust and calls out his own monster, that looks like a giant olive with big, mean-looking eyebrows. The aforesaid villain then laughs maniacally.

BECKY
a contest of who can make the loudest and longest grunt now begins, until suddenly a third guy with a green mohawk jumps out of the woods and joins the grunting contest.

EMILY
The grunters then send Lima-chu and the Evil Olive and the mohawk guy’s monster, which looks like a dustpan with buff arms, after one another. It appears that the monsters are traveling toward one another at great speed, but actually they’re staying still while the striped background quivers slightly.

BECKY
the scene then cuts to a large
TO BE CONTINUED…
and then the credits roll on for endless hours filled with non-American names

EMILY
In the next episode, the olive monster will explode in a fantastic display of blue, red, and green flashing lights, which will send children nationwide into epileptic seizures.

BECKY
yet the show grows ever more popular…