If you’ve ever spent any time in Corporate America, you’ve run into people just like them. The utterly useless executive, who earns a lot of money to accomplish very little. The self-important admin assistant, who thinks that because she’s the CEO’s secretary, she’s more important than every other employee in the company. The guy that steals your lunch out of the community refrigerator. … I could go on and on.
Well, NottaTOY, a local, Austin-based company … err… collection of misfits, has turned all our angst into a business and all of those annoying personalities into plush toys we can use as voodoo dolls or give as “gifts” (hints) to our co-workers. In 2008, they began producing their line of Office Cronies, which you can either buy online or in select stores.
NottaTOY's Office Cronies
Their initial product offering is a group of five (5) high-quality, handcrafted plush toys that have personalities eerily close to folks I’ve had to deal with in the past.
The Personalities (we love to hate):
- Empty Suit – This is my personal fav. This is the executive you see in most companies creating busy work for others but doing very little him/herself but collecting a nice paycheck and taking up valuable space and oxygen.
- Mean Admin – Often connected to Empty Suit, he/she is the epitome of self-importance and vile nastiness. No one gets through them to see the Empty Suit. They get all the power with none of the pay, and everyone else suffers for it.
- Captain Obvious – Here’s the guy that preserves his job by eloquently stating the obvious. He’s a highly likable personality, who will win you over with a smile and an altruism. But if you dig deeper, you’ll see that the lights are on, but nobody’s home.
- Bottleneck - This person hangs on to their job by holding up every release with new processes and procedures designed not to add any true value, but to add perceived value to their role in the company.
- Fridge Raider – Here is the dreaded nemesis of every person who has ever taken their lunch to work and left it in the refrigerator, only to find it missing at lunchtime. That leftover lasagna you were looking forward to? Gone, into Fridge Raider’s bottomless stomach.
I’m personally looking forward to the release of Megaphone Mouth, because I deal with them all the time. (I’ll be sticking some pins in that one.)
I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of these plush toys. Really, for a price of $20 (US), their stitching is flawless, and they seem to be very durable. Cleaning them as necessary should be a breeze, but would you really want to wash the dirt off of these guys? It’s not like you love them. ^_~
To buy your own Office Cronies, go to http://www.nottatoy.com, or head over to Dragon’s Lair on Burnet Road.
While, I’m no plushie expert, I give NottaTOY the following rating:
Rating: 
