Well, another Christmas has come and passed, and I hope your holiday season was peaceful. Mine was lovely—we spent time with family and friends, ate a lot of fantastic food, and exchanged gifts. I got some very cool things this year: a couple of miniature kits (see below for a picture of the one that I already built), some jigsaw puzzles, lots of chocolate and wine—yeah, my family knows me pretty well. But there was one gift that made me laugh my head off. It was a game called “Once Upon A Pair: A Literary Matching Game.” The rules are simple—there are 26 pairs of cards, each with the title of a book on them, and the idea is to lay them face down, then flip over two at a time, trying to get a match. And yes, I know that’s not funny in the least but I was really excited to see what the books were so I opened the packages up:

Me: Ooh, look Ken. Peter Pan, Wuthering Heights, The Picture of Dorian Gray…hang on. What the hell is this?
Ken: What does it say?
Me: The Hunchback of NORTE-Dame. And this one says, The Legend of Sleepy HALLOW. The Young VISITERS? I think something was lost in translation here—yep.
Ken: Does Moby Dick normally have a hyphen in it?
Me: In China, I guess? At least it doesn’t say Moby’s Dick. Oh, here we have The Art of War and The Diary of a Young Girl. Nothing says fun like Sun Tzu and the Holocaust.

I’m still looking forward to playing it, despite the warning on the back that it’s a Choking Hazard, as if someone is going to ram a thick piece of cardboard down their throat—

Atlas: Ahem…

Well, those warnings are there because SOMEONE has done it in the past, I guess.

And then I started to build one of my miniature kits and discovered the same issue. Stickers were misspelled, like ‘Potcard Holder’ and there were also a lot of tiny books, again with very interesting titles: The Mienes of Amish, Abourogh The Wor LD In 80 Days, and of course, everyone’s favourite, Alice’s Wonderland.

The instructions were equally nebulous, and you’d think considering how much money the company must make on these things, they’d hire an actual translator and editor instead of winging it. Still, it’s done and I think it’s very cewt, don’t you?