Pink Mice?

Pink Mice?
It's a long story from the distant past that seems like another lifetime. It all started in 1988 when John's (now ex) wife bought him a small, fat, pink mouse for his birthday. This little chap was so cute and funny-looking that he appealed greatly to John who christened him Fat Mouse. When John showed Fat Mouse to his friends and colleagues, some of them also fell in love with him, and before long, there was a small craze of fat-mouse-buying among programmers and artists at John's workplace. One particularly disturbed artist removed the stuffing from his mouse and stuck the skin on the wall, but the rest survived.

The pink mice featured in the team's software as 'programmer psychotherapists' and even got their pictures in computer magazines and on a promotional video. At some point the team suggested to their MD that they should call the company's software label 'Pink Mouse Productions' but she did not agree with them!

When the others got bored with their mice, they handed them over to John who started to build up a huge collection of the things. By now the mice each had their own names, a generic name, Puntettay, their own language, their own planet, Meesadin, and their own story. In fact, John has long had plans to produce an animated sci-fi film of the mouse story itself. This may or may not ever come to fruition.

There are two sizes of Puntettay, small and large. Between 1988 and 1990 it was common to walk into a shop such as Hall of Cards and see thousands of these things piled up on a shelf alongside teddy bears, frogs and fluffy hearts. Now, unfortunately, they seem to be out of production.