Author’s note: For the uninitiated Stikeez are a collectable toy sold by Lidl, the food supermarket, here in the UK once a year, for one month. This is the story of what happened to twelve of these plucky little toys in my house…

Man. What were we thinking? We were just raw recruits, fresh out of the packaging, we didn’t know no better. We just wanted to get on and do our tour, we figured it would be a breeze; get in, get played with, get out.

Shoved together in that Austrian Supermarket pit-of-hell, we clung to each other, as we were carried back to the place that would become our prison. And for some, our coffin.

Things were ok at first. We got played with, got stuck to surfaces and licked. But that was ok, because that’s what we were designed for. But then strange things started happening.

We were supposed to be played with by the large one, one of the guys heard him getting shouted at, and we realised he was four. That was ok, he was a wise guy and liked to play rough, but we was built for that.

It was when the smaller one got hold of some of us, that’s when things went wrong. She wasn’t even two. My god…what were they thinking. 36 months and above…36 MONTHS AND ABOVE it said..RIGHT THERE ON THE PACKAGING.

There were whispers that there had been other Stikeez originally, but some of them hadn’t even made it out of the car. The little one was quick with her hands, and she liked to pick stuff up…but she liked to throw stuff away too. And she did it real quiet.

Crabbo, used to cry himself to sleep at night, one of the other guys, Fluffle, said he was crying for his twin, said he remembered seeing him in the car…with a little fist wrapped around him.I had a word with him. Asked him to sleep somewhere else, his cries were disturbing the rest of the crew.

Also he glowed in the dark.

Not long after the little one got her mitts on us, the first of my crew disappeared.

Fishy, god, why Fishy? He was the heart and soul of our crew. Then one fateful bath-night he went up with the kids as normal…and never came back. Some of the guys say they can hear him up there, on nights when the kids are especially dirty. They say his wails come through the plughole.

Bucktooth bought the farm next.

He went in the great Lego massacre of 10.36am, Wednesday. The big guy, we heard him called ‘daddy’, just lost it. Started screaming ‘I’M TIRED OF PICKING UP THESE BITS OF BLOODY LEGO’ and then he got out the big suck machine. We know to hide when the big suck machine comes out. It’s dangerous. But them Lego kids…they don’t know no better. They ain’t smart like us see?

They just stood there and got hoovered up. Little pieces, wheels, arms…Finally Bucktooth couldn’t take it no more. He ran in to try to save a Lego man, with Boba Fett’s body and Spiderman’s head, and… that was all he wrote.

The glitter girls were next. We all loved them. They brought a feminine touch to the gang, and helped keep us warm on those lonely nights when we’d been left inside the cupholder in the car. They went out one day, all four of them, full of joy and laughter. They went out clutched in the little one’s fist. They went out…but only one came back.

Sparkle didn’t speak much after that. We couldn’t make head or tail of what she said. Just occasional snatches, things like ‘she kept putting us in her mouth..my god..the drool’ and ‘why would you put a Stikeez there…why?’.

We tried to keep an eye on her but one night she slipped away and we found her the next day, on the way to school. She’d got outside during the night, and hid underneath the back wheel of the neighbour’s car. That weren’t no sight to see, let me tell ya.

Fluffle and Wuffle…they got some stick over their hair, but they was real stand-up guys. We all was. That’s the way they manufactured us. They went to school with the big kid, you could see the fear in their eyes. They weren’t supposed to go to that school. None of us were. We knew the rules, and we’d heard the rumours about toys that went to school. But that one day daddy was distracted, with the little one doing a ‘big smelly’ as we called it, in her pants. While he was dealing with that, the big kid just picked up Fluffle and Wuffle and stuffed ‘em in his pocket.

We never saw ‘em again…

Things unravelled quick after that. Whaley and Pinko went to a birthday party, and well, Pinko…he don’t see too good no more. We think what happened was he wandered into the wrong kid’s backpack…Whaley went in after him and…man..Whaley was only a pup, his manufacture date was just this year…

After that it was just me an Crabbo..he cracked. Started ranting about how he wasn’t gonna take it no more. He was gonna do something about it. He was gonna go looking for the others, and get the gang back together and make things right. He went native, went in to ‘the jungle’ out back. I see him sometimes, when the night is black, well I would, after all he glows in the dark. He just sits there next to the bins…just sitting there staring at the moon.

So now there’s just me…the last of the Stikeez dozen. I don’t know how long I’m going to last. It gets lonely out here, and them Lego kids ain’t much for conversation. I haven’t been stuck to a surface in weeks. And my suction cup is beginning to desiccate.

My time’s almost up…I’ve seen the way the daddy looks at me when he’s vacuuming…the end’s close. I can feel it. I’ll be with my buddies again soon…

Pvt First Class Bobo ‘Bluey’ Jones