Do you ever wish that you could pass on your old favourite toy to the next generation? Well thanks to the determination of one grandmother, Nick Hollinger, a primary school teacher, gets to do just that.
At 29 year-old still Hollinger still has a favourite stuffed toy. Its name is Fraffy the unicorn and, as you can probably guess, he's received a few knocks over the years.
Recently, Hollinger took to Reddit to share how the tradition of Fraffys is continuing, through his 8 month old son.
As Hollinger explains: "On the left is my first (now un)stuffed animal I️ received for Christmas 29 years ago. On the right, the new Fraffy my mom tracked down to give to my 8 month old son for his first Christmas. I️ can’t believe he used to have horns!"
Nick's mother, Jan Hollinger, went through great lengths to try an find the same toy, as he holds some very special memories. As Nick told The Huffington Post :
“He was my best friend. So much so that he spent most of his early years in my mouth, sacrificing his horns and stuffing to make sure I could sleep nightmare-free,”
“I had many stuffed animals when I was a kid, but none so special as Fraffy. As I got older, my other stuffed friends made their way to storage or the Goodwill, but something about Fraffy cemented a home for him on my pillow for an embarrassingly long time.”
When Nick was 12, the family moved from Washington to Chicago- with Fraffy providing great comfort to Nick throughout the adjustment period. As a teenager, Fraffy stayed under the covers whenever he had friends over.
While preparing to move in with his now-wife, Nick and Jan stumbled across the very old Fraffy hidden in a drawer. His mother insisted that Fraffy made it to his new home:
“I looked at my teary-eyed mother who I knew was having trouble accepting that her youngest would be leaving her nest. ‘Why don’t you keep him?’ [she said]. ‘You can keep him safe and he can keep you safe, just like he did for me’”
After the couples pregnancy announcement, Jan spent months searching on ebay for Fraffy the second. Prices for the Playskool Snuzzles Giraffe start at about $200, and while Jan never admitted how much she spent, she did admit to taking part in three different bidding wars.
Last Christmas, Jan made sure that the new arrival would have a Fraffy, by gifting it to him before he was even born!
Nick recalls seeing the new Fraffy for the first time: “There he was: a brand new Fraffy, vibrant and velvety, horned, hole-less and whole, stuffed full of soft cotton and life. He was the best Christmas present I ever received.”
His son Link, now 8 months old, "loves his Fraffy, and his grandma for getting it for him.”
Now that's one toy story that's got us all fluffy inside!
