Giraffe: Come in! Come on in, children! Come on into the first Toys R Us in Korea! The biggest toy store ever in ALL of Korea!
Jae Woo: Hey, what's wrong Mi Ra?
Mi Ra: I don't know about this new Toys R Us.
Jae Woo: What do you mean?
Mi Ra: Well, I wonder if it really is the world's greatest toy store.
Jae Woo: Of course it is! It's huge!
Mi Ra: I know. I know. But I think it's kind of weird that it's almost completely full of stuff from Japan and the United States.
Jae Woo: What's weird about that?
Mi Ra: We live in Korea, remember?
Jae Woo: Oh come on! They they have tons of Pororo stuff. Everybody loves Pororo!
Mi Ra: I know. They have a ton of Pororo stuff. But other than that little penguin, everything else is from other countries it seems like. Don't you worry about our culture, Jae Woo?
Jae Woo: Worry about our culture? Ha! No way!Mi Ra: Well, don't you wish we had more of our own toys? And our own cartoons?
Jae Woo: I don't know. If you want your own cartoons so much, why don't you just tell your uncle to make them. He's an animator, isn't he?
Mi Ra: Tell my uncle! Are you crazy? He spends six days a week animating for other countries. Actually, he makes the animation that they base all these toys off of and then sell back to us at high prices. He doesn't have the time or money to worry about creating his own thing!
Jae Woo: Oh, lighten up! If it's so bad in animation, he should just go work in real estate then.
Mi Ra: Okay, okay. I won't complain about our lack of original content. Still, doesn't something seem awfully suspicious about that giraffe mascot?
Mi Ra & Jae Woo: Definitely!
Giraffe: Hey everybody! We've been open since December 8th and like to stay open for a loooooong time! So don't go to those small little toy stores everywhere else, come to Toys R Us located in Lotte Mart! It's conveniently located next to the Guil subway station in Seoul.Useful Link: Toys "R" Us opening first store in South Korea
Everland hosted an art display in their amusement park as part of their Everland Happy Halloween celebration. Grade school children were asked to submit their ideas for Halloween monsters. Those drawings were given to art students at Hongik University, a renowned arts university in Seoul, who used the drawings as inspiration for further drawings.
There were tons of displays that looked just like this in the European themed square. Here's some close-ups of the monsters the kids and art students imagined:
Cool Goggles!
A selected few drawings got the deluxe treatment and were made into displays. Here are some of those:
The final display at Everland.
This pumpkin goblin by a 4 year-old is my favorite.
Character designers take note; I think this model of creating characters is brilliant and should be used more often. Don't you think kids come up with some great ideas?