WTF: Puppy Surprise Is Back and Selling like Hotcakes

Surely one of the strangest items in communal millennial memory is Puppy Surprise, a fuzzy pink dog who came with some random number of puppies preloaded in her plush womb. (Never mind that real-deal puppies come out slimy little ratlike creatures.)

Well, Puppy is back, she’s gravid as ever, and she’s already a popular purchase for Christmas 2014.

Bloomberg Businessweek reports (h/t Fark) on the unlikely rebirth of Puppy Surprise. The toy originally hit the market in 1991; inventor Ed Kaplan said a Hasbro exec knew immediately it was a winner: “It took him 30 seconds. He bought it on the spot.” Over the next three years, they sold $600 million worth of the damn things. A sample commercial from those heady days:

The property is now owned by Florida-based Just Play (which also makes Care Bears), who reintroduced the toy in August,as a kind of nostalgic novelty. Sales have been so much better than expected they’ve had to pause their TV advertising until they can shovel out more units. This despite (or perhaps because) they barely changed anything. Even the commercials feel like a throwback:

Glad to see somebody learned from the horrible example of the revamped Strawberry Shortcake.