If Nautical Nonsense Is Something You Wish…

LIKE YOU, I collect tiki mugs and related exoticabilia.

Unlike you, I’ve done so for ages. I’m not some Ionakana-Come-Lately who just started a few years ago when it became wildly trendy. No, I began collecting tiki stuff a little before that, when it was just reasonably trendy.

So you can imagine my delight when I was over at Petco recently picking up some more of that anchovy-flavored hairball paste Mr. Whiskers loves (on a crisp Ritz cracker) and I happened past the aquarium department where I saw this:

…And it took me but a moment before I realized, why, that’s not just any Easter Island mo’ai, that’s Squidward’s mo’ai, from the perennially popular Nickelodeon cartoon “Spongebob Squarepants!”

Sure enough, when I backed up a little bit, why, there was Spongebob’s pineapple house!

And it was right next door, to the right – our right – of Squidward’s place – just like on the show. Happy accident or Spongebob-loving Petco employee with an obsession for accuracy? I think we’d both like to believe it’s the latter.

These aquarium decorations are from the good folks at Penn-Plax and they’re just two among a number of Spongebob decorations for the well-dressed fish tank.

They’ve even got the Krusty Krab!

Look! Look!

In addition to these buildings, they’ve also got little resin figures of all your favorite Bikini Bottom citizens – Spongebob, Patrick, Squidward, Mr. Krabs, Mrs. Puff, Plankton, even Gary.

And what strikes me, and now you, about these decorative houses and the characters – is how very on-model they are. That is, how everything looks exactly as it does on the show!

Well…almost everything.

But let’s make this a teaching moment and use poor Sandy Cheeks’ ghastly, distorted countenance and the unbelievably agonizing pain we must assume she is experiencing as a warning to any of you less-experienced divers out there about the gruesome effects of surfacing too quickly.

Posted by Ted on March 18, 2013, 5:52 AM.