Penguin Party

My sister got back from a trip to Disney World last month, and brought back a fun birthday present for me. There's a series of Disney-themed Muppet figures, different characters styled up with Mickey ears. Two series, actually, and this newer second series gets into some fun secondary characters like the band members of the Electric Mayhem.

Anyway, she brought me back two figures from the series. But there was a catch. Each 12-figure series is sold at random. You don't know which figure you're going to get until you open it. And as luck would have it, I got the same figure twice:


The Muppet penguins do make appearances here and there, but unfortunately were the only unnamed characters in the series of 12. Not the one you'd hope to get in duplicate, but there you have it. Poetic justice for guy that has made a living selling randomized booster packs of trading cards to people, I suppose.

Well, my sister felt bad about my luck, and so she got online and ordered me one more figure. I didn't know she'd done it until I saw her recently, and she hopefully presented me with another Muppet figure to open. We joked about the possibility of it being another penguin.

The joke's on me. Her. Us. It was a third penguin. The odds of a figure trifecta, assuming equal distribution of these figures, is 1 in 144. Maybe not odds either one of us would have chosen to beat, but I have to say, the gift is still kind of fun. Before, I had kept one penguin at home and one on my desk at work. But now, I've brought the one from work home, in order to form a bowling-pin-like triangle of penguins on my shelf. They're pretty fun to look at.

And they made a good story. (Well, I think so, anyway.)