I see the creature everywhere. It has big teeth and hair. They tell me it is called Labubu. People lust for it, crave it. But I have lived long enough to see its kind come and go. Labubu is just Webkinz is just Beanie Babies is just Cabbage Patch Kids, the freak success stories sailing on an ocean of also-rans. For now they float atop this dark sea, but in time they too will sink beneath its surface. They are the lucky ones. Most never see the sun. Some breach for but a moment before plummeting to the depths of obscurity, like this one.

For decades the image of this doll would flash into my mind, unbidden. I recalled my best friend receiving one from his parents sometime in the early ’90s and both of us being utterly baffled by it. Maybe, I thought, it had been a short-lived mascot for my hometown’s CFL team, whose colors were also yellow and black? The name “Floyd” lingered in my memory, but searches on the increasingly-broken Google didn’t turn anything up. And then, a week ago, providence. I had been a single letter off the truth — it wasn’t “Floyd.” It was Froyd. Sorry, F.R.O.Y.D.

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