Every year, we try to put together some festive posts for the holidays, and it's always a lot of fun. This year we thought we'd try something different that would exercise our creative muscles, while still being holiday themed. So I came up with a Christmas prompt, and each of us wrote a one-page story about a misfit toy, and now we're sharing them with you. We hope your holidays are merry!

Kristan's Prompt:

We should have been a huge hit. We are cute and brightly colored. We have big round eyes and big round bodies — cartoonishly poofed out and squishable. When you squeeze us, we sing out with charming sounds. We are well made and easy to grip, even for clumsy babies. But older kids would play with us too. Anyone would play with us.

We should have been a huge hit.

But something happened at the factory. A wrong button got pushed, or a wrong order programmed into the machines. When we went down the assembly line, we got mixed up. We got messed up.

The cow says RUFF RUFF. The dog says NEEIIGGHH. The horse says QUACK QUACK. The duck says BAAAHHH. The sheep says MOOOOO.

At first we thought maybe everything would still turn out all right. Maybe no one would notice. Or maybe no one would mind too much, since we were still so adorable and fun.

But we were wrong.

We sat on the shelf, day after day. Every time a child walked up to us, the smile on their face would get bigger and brighter. We thought surely this would be the one. They would fall in love with us, the Roly Poly Farm Animals, and insist to their mother or father that they take us home.

Home…

Instead, they would squish Cow, or Dog, and the wrong sound would come out. And those beautiful happy smiles would melt away. They would look confused, disappointed. And then they would just move on down the aisle to some other toy. A toy that did what it was supposed to do.

So here we sit, sad and unloved.

Ruff ruff, neigh, quack quack, bah, moo.