Our Business AND Our Christian Beliefs

We have been selling plush animals and soft dolls online for about 7 years. And we've been running our free Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service about that long. If we don't have something in stock in our catalog we offer to help find it. So we get a fair number of people who found a particular out of stock lovie in our catalog and write asking for help locating one.

If I can't find it, then I reply via email asking for a story about why it is important and why they are looking for it, so I can post it on our Search Service.

Sounds simple enough, right? Well, here's the "hitch". We have always considered our Search Service to be our Christian Ministry, so there is a prominently placed scripture verse near the top of the online page. And all our emails have signatures that include scripture verses. I decided last year that I no longer wanted to sign my emails with just Merry Christmas during December.

So here are some examples of my email sigs:

May you and your family enjoy the Blessings of Jesus in this holy time of year,

OR

May you have a Christ filled Christmas,

Rosemary

Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

Luke 2:10-11 KJV

This week someone who had asked for help finding an out of stock catalog item wrote me back after I'd written her, using a sig similar to one of these. She said she wanted me to delete all her correspondence with us. She explained that she had not realized she was dealing with some religious cult and did not want to use our service.

I replied that I had done as she asked and had deleted all our correspondence, but I wanted her to know that we are Christians who belong to a Southern Baptist Church.

I've heard the term "War on Christmas" lately on talk radio, and I've certainly seen a drastic reduction in the number of clerks who wish us a "Merry Christmas" at the checkout counter. And I imagine we've lost business in the past because of our prominent scripture verses.

But this is the first time someone went out of their way to point out how weird they thought we were.

Brentwood MOSHI Elephant

Brentwood MOSHI XL Blue Pink Lying Down Elephant 

The gold standard of Microbead lovies are those made by Brentwood Originals, and we are very pleased to have a beautiful blue lying down MOSHI elephant for sale right now in our catalog. These squishy lovies are a favorite of young children, who find them to be very cuddly. And they are very hard to find!

Check out the prices of the various XL Brentwood MOSHI animals on eBay, and you'll see they run as high as $100. We try to price all our lovies competitively, so you're not likely to find one in very good condition for less than ours.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Do You Remember PJ Sparkles Dolls & Sparklins Pets?

Mattel 1989 PJ Sparkles SPARKLINS Pink Stars Rabbit 

If you're in your 30's or 40's you may have loved a PJ Sparkles doll, or maybe had one of her pets. Mattel's ad slogan for the dolls was, "Hug me and I light up with love!". The Sparklins pets all had glow in the dark stars covering their satin bodies, and they had a removable glow in the dark plastic necklace that the child could wear as a bracelet.

We now have a Mattel 1989 plush 12 inch PJ Sparkles Pet SPARKLINS pink satin rabbit in our catalog. She has cream satin lining in her ears and a pink sparkly fur hair tuft with a pink shiny Mylar hair bow. She has a sweet white knit face with large plastic eyes, a blush on her cheeks, and a pink plastic nose.

Put her under a strong light for a while, then take her in the dark, and you're in for a surprise. Not only does her body light up with stars, but her sleepy eyes glow, too!

Why not take a look down memory lane and check out her pictures in our catalog.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Eden Vintage White Giraffe Moves Plays AROUND the WORLD in 80 DAYS

Eden Vintage White Giraffe Moves Plays AROUND the WORLD in 80 DAYS

We finally have the newest version of our catalog software running fairly smoothly. There are still a few glitches we haven't been able to fix yet, but the site is working. So I now have the time to start back to adding some of the many plush lovies we have in stock.

I'm very excited to be able to offer a vintage Eden musical white giraffe for sale. She has a pink, blue, and yellow yarn loop mane and matching yarn tail. Her horns are soft terry cloth. When the metal key on the body is wound, the head slowly moves, and it plays Around the World in 80 Days.

Did you have a windup lovie like this giraffe when you were little? Do you still have your childhood toy, or have you thought about looking for one like it?

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

New Catalog is ONLINE!

Commonwealth XL Jumbo Love Pink Lavender Elephant

This Jumbo Love elephant is a favorite collectible of children of the 80's. Many of these grownups are now searching for their childhood toys, and these over sized lovies seem to be at the top of the list. Contact us if you're interested in buying it, as we'll consider any reasonable offer.

It's taken several months of intense learning, lots of trial and error (about the only way I know how to learn anything), and lots of time, but I've finally managed to upgrade our old catalog to the new version 5 of the CubeCart software I use. The cart program developers did a complete rework of code from the ground up, so I had to learn the software all over again. In the process of debugging, I also learned a whole lot about the php programming language, as well as understanding MySQL databases. I even learned a little bit about Apache. Unless you're a nerd I know none of that meant anything to you, but it makes me feel very proud of myself that I can still learn how to do such things.

There are still some bugs to be ironed out, both by the software developers, and by me on our site, so if you take a look around and find something that doesn't seem to work quite right I'd appreciate a quick email.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Henrietta Needs Someone to Love

We found this beautifully preserved Henrietta dog today, and I couldn't wait to put it in our catalog. She's missing her hair bows and neck bow and has a tiny open seam that could easily be repaired. Other than that she looks brand new. That wouldn't be so surprising, but this dog is 36 years old!

There's no cedar chest smell, so I can't help but wonder where she's been all these years. For a vintage toy that has been so carefully stored for so long, there has to be an interesting story about why it ended up at the Thrift Store.

Someone is going to be very happy to get this favorite childhood lovie! And she's going to be loved again.

1975 Animal Fair XL Gold Brown HENRIETTA Dog

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

CubeCart Upgrade to Version 5 Problems

CubeCart version 5 turned out to be harder to upgrade than we had expected. Part of our problem with trying to upgrade to v5 was all the old code lingering all the way back to version 3. So, Our programmer has made a clean install of v4.5 CubeCart, and he's going to use that until v5 is less buggy.

It's been very frustrating, for sure. But I learned a lot about MySQL databases and a good bit about CubeCart 5.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Playing with Cube Cart Version 5

I have been learning a little bit about how MySQL data bases are set up, how to install CubeCart, and was actually able to install a test version of the newest version of CubeCart to play with. I wasn't able to figure out how to copy our running CubeCart v4 data and upgrade to v5, but I did make a clean install of v5. So I've been able to test it out to some extent, and I'm very pleased with the way it works.

So, I've told our programmer to go ahead with the upgrade to v5 for our store whenever he has the time to do it.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with what I was able to do on my own. Of course, he won't be using anything I did. I'll just delete the data base and files I created, but I learned a lot in the process.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

CubeCart Version 4 Upgrade Continues

We're still working on the upgrade to version 4 of CubeCart for our catalog. It's going to take a while to get everything working just the way I want it to, although our programmer has made great progress already!

We're filling orders and have mailed quite a few lovies since the changes, so we're glad we made this upgrade.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

BIG SITE CHANGE UNDERWAY!

Our programmer has started the change to the new version of CubeCart. So for now the catalog looks really odd, as it's all set up the default way. It's going to take a while to get everything looking and working just the way I want it to.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

ALABAMA TORNADO Plush Lovies DISCOUNT

The tornadoes that swarmed through Alabama, our home state, have been devastating. We were fortunate to be missed, but many have been left homeless and over 200 are dead.

Alabamians from all over are working to help with bottled water, food, diapers, and other necessities.

So, we want to help the little ones who have lost all their lovies.

Anyone who mails to an Alabama Shipping Address through June 30 should use ALABAMA as the DISCOUNT CODE to get 50% OFF their order from Dirty Butter Plush Animal Shoppe.

Please forward this information to anyone you know who has family in Alabama who may need help replacing a lovie. If the child was fortunate enough to not be in the path of the tornado, we encourage the buyer to donate the other half to Disaster Relief.

If we don't have what they need in stock, they can contact us at our FREE Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service, and they will get TOP PRIORITY help.

http://plushmemories.com/contact-us

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

Our Catalog is Back in Action!

Our Dirty Butter Plush Animal Shoppe is back up and running, thank goodness. We still seem to be having a lot of people who can't get the Basket to work properly, so our programmer is going to upgrade us to CubeCart v4 soon. We had to be sure all the hosting issues were resolved before we started thinking about such a major change, though.

Hopefully that will take care of this very frustrating issue, as we feel sure we're losing orders because of it.

We're using CC version 3 right now, which is free, but if paying for the latest version gets us more orders, it will be worth it!

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Now our Catalog Site is Down!!

We thought we had solved all our site problems for the time being, but right now all our dirtybutter.com sites are down. The Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service is still working properly, so you can contact me that way if you need to.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Site Down AGAIN!

We're having site problems, AGAIN! Finding a good host who will work with us has been a real problem. Please bear with us while we get moved to another host. Hopefully it won't be too long before our Plush Catalog and our free Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service will be back up and running.

Vintage 50's - 60's Vinyl Head Cloth Body Hand Puppets - KING FRIDAY

King Friday and Queen Sara from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood of Make-Believe are just two of a lot of vintage vinyl head cloth body hand puppets we have for sale right now. There's also a clown head I'm reasonably sure is a Bozo clown.

The cloth is in better shape on some than on the others, but all the heads are as close to perfect as you're likely to find for a child's puppet that is 50 years old or more! Since they are collectibles, I've not attempted to clean them in any way. A few do have some soil on the heads that really looks like it would just wash off.

Even if you're not interested in purchasing one of these, why not take a walk down memory lane and take a look at these old friends. If you recognize any of these puppets and know what their names are or anything about them, I'd love to hear from you!




Vintage Vinyl Head Hand Puppets

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

For Sale! Very Hard to Find DAKIN 70s Bright YELLOW DROOPER Dog Brown Ears

We recently found the very hard to find bright yellow color of the 70's DAKIN Drooper Dog in excellent condition and it's now for sale in our catalog!! It's like new, which is remarkable, considering its age.

DAKIN 70's Bright Yellow DROOPER Dog Brown Ears

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

We Found a VERY RARE Snuzzles LION!

We were very excited yesterday to find the extremely rare Snuzzles lion in very good condition. These wonderful Blankies animals were made by Playskool in the 80's, and they are in high demand. All of them are hard to find now. I'm not sure why the lion is so much harder to find than the others, but it is.

If you remember the Snuzzles and would like to see several photos of this one, or if you would be interested in purchasing it, we hope you will stop by our Dirty Butter Plush Animal Shoppe.


Playskool 1986 No. 5400 Snuzzles Blankies Plaid Lion Satin Mane, Feet

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Does Your Child Get Enough Sleep?

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Campaign GARFIELD STAR SLEEPER

This Garfield might be able to help if you're having trouble getting your child to develop good sleep habits. He was the plush mascot for the nih.gov "Sleep Well, Do Well, Star Sleeper Campaign" some years ago. He'd be the perfect reward for that little one who has been struggling with sleeping in their own bed or sleeping all night long.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Our Press Release is ONLINE!

I managed to read a lot of different online directions about how to write a Press Release and ended up with something that I thought was good enough to publish.

I filed one version of it on http://www.prlog.org/ and another version on Free Express Press Release Distribution. PRlog published our story almost instantly, but I'm waiting for approval of the version on the Free Express PR Distribution site.

I also called our local county newspaper this morning to find out how to send a copy to them, and that's been emailed as well.

I feel sure this process would not take someone who was used to doing it very long at all. But I spent the better part of 2 days taking care of this, with no guarantee it did any good to spread the word about our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service, which in the ministry arm of our Dirty Butter Plush Animal Shoppe.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Trying My Hand at a Press Release

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday evening and this afternoon learning how to write a press release in the proper form and then trying to write one. I'm not sure if anything will come of it, or if it will ever be published anywhere, but I did my best.

Each of our out of stock listings directs people to contact us, and we will try to help them find what they are looking for. This has been our policy for our Plush Catalog ever since we started business in 2005.

As a way to increase the chance of someone being helped, we started the Plush Memories blog, posting these requests for help. The chances of finding these lovies depends in large part on how much publicity our Search Service gets. So, please spread the word about our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service, and wish me good luck with the Press Release!

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service.

GUND Cream, Black, Tan MARSHMALLOW COW

We found what I thought was a very hard to find GUND Plush 12 inch floppy cream or white cow named BELLE. But, after hearing from the person who has been looking for a Belle cow, I now know that ours is a GUND MILKSHAKE cow.

She has black outside and pink inside her ears. There's a large black spot on her back and on the tip of her tail. She has tan horns and muzzle, black eyes and eyelashes, and she's wearing a black Patent Leather look plastic collar. She's LIKE NEW.

If anyone finds a similar looking cow without the black collar and terry finish rather than a plush fur, please contact us, so we can put you in touch with Dubie, who is looking for one.

GUND Black White Tan Pink Cow MILKSHAKE Black Shiny Collar

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Fisher Price 1986 No. 8005 Pink White Puffalump Lamb with Dress

We now have for sale a Fisher Price 1986 No. 8005 plush 15 inch pink Puffalump lamb with white ears, face, hands, and feet. She has a pink nose. Her removable dress has a white lace trimmed collar with a flower at the bodice. It has the old balloon logo on the foot. The TUSH TAG IS WRINKLED, BUT IT'S IN EXCELLENT CONDITION - LIKE NEW.

It's unusual to find one of the original series of Puffalumps in this good a condition. Somebody is going to be very pleased to have this childhood friend back at home with them!

Fisher Price 1986 No. 8005 Pink White Puffalump Lamb with Dress

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Mary Meyer Baby Pink White Minky Bumpy Velour DIMPLES Giraffe

We have for sale right now a very hard to find Mary Meyer Baby Plush 12 inch Pink DIMPLES Bumpy Minky Dot Velour Giraffe with a White Velour Muzzle and Ears, with Darker Pink Hooves. It's LIKE NEW. There's only one more available anywhere on the Internet that I could find, and theirs is more expensive than ours.

Mary Meyer Baby Pink White Minky Bumpy Velour DIMPLES Giraffe

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

MLB Babe Ruff Barons Baseball Mascot MINT

We've just started adding our large collection of mint condition Sports stuffed mascots to our catalog, and this is the first of many different characters to follow. The Birmingham Barons mascot is a takeoff on the Red Baron aviator of WWII fame, wearing his aviator cap, goggles, and trademark white scarf.

MINT Minor League Baseball BARONS Mascot BABE RUFF

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.

Looking Back at 2010 and Forward to 2011

I added over 800 items to our catalog in 2010, with a net increase in in-stock items of about 500 lovies, since we sold some lovies last year. We didn't sell as many as we usually do, but with the economy the way it is, that's not surprising.

We're still having some problems with coding issues, such as the Tell-a-Friend page doesn't work properly on the Catalog pages. And somewhere along the way we've lost our gumball border, although the code is still there, but that is a minor cosmetic problem.

I'm hoping to get a modification installed on the catalog sometime this year that will let people use our catalog properly from a smart phone. I think the time has come to consider such a move to be advantageous.

I don't make New Year's Resolutions, but I do hope to get more than 800 new items listed in 2011. I'm not happy with that number for last year at all.

Thank you for telling your family and friends about us and spreading the word about our free Search Service.

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We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.