This Teeny Weeny Families teapot was given to me by Santa Claus at Christmas 1996. It has even deserved a mention in my diary. I remember that at that particular time, I still liked toys but I was getting a bit too old to actually play with them. So, I didn’t quite know what to do with my new teapot and its bunny inhabitants. Eventually, I placed the toy on my bookshelf and kept it there as a decorative element, as I thought it was cute.
The Teeny Weeny Families toy line consists of several playsets. All the playsets include a small (or in some cases, a slightly larger) opening house with a few tiny animal residents and their accessory items. The houses look pretty cheerful and they are shaped to resemble everyday objects that are abandoned in the garden.
The Teeny Weeny Families series includes, for example, an odd shoe, an iron, and a sewing machine, inside which small animals have made their homes. I have only owned one Teeny Weeny Families set myself – this teapot – and I somehow wasn’t even very aware of the other items of this series until I began to write this blog post.
The complete playset: teapot, bunnies and their accessories. Also a yellow version of the teapot was manufactured, but the pink one is more common.
The Hippity Hop Cafe playset includes the following parts: a teapot house that opens up, a cafe nameplate, a white table, two white chairs, two food trays with food and beverages, two bunnies, and a white ladder that fits inside the teapot.
When the playset was brand new, it included a sticker sheet with the following pieces: two similar “Hippity Hop Cafe” stickers for the cafe nameplate (one sticker on each side of the plate), three pieces of curtains, a small decorative board with the text “Home Sweet Home”, and a Menu list. I have glued all the stickers here and there all over the teapot back in the days. They are still there today.
Besides the stickers, I have kept all the other above mentioned parts of this playset safe, too. But there is one item that is missing, and I don’t even remember having it. According to the information that I have dug up on the internet, this set would also include a booklet that tells the backstory of the Hoppit bunny family. I don’t remember having such a booklet at all. I guess that I have just misplaced it at some point in life.
The backside of the teapot is not as decorative as the frontside.
The bottom of the teapot has the following markings: ©1995 Vivid Imaginations, Made in China. Other parts included in the set, such as the bunnies and furniture, do not have any markings. The toys are made of hard plastic.
The Teeny Weeny Families brand went on sale in Finland in 1996 – the same year when I got this toy as a Christmas present. The Vivid Imaginations toy company originates from Great Britain, and it is apparently still functioning now, in the 2020s. However, it looks like the production of the Teeny Weeny Families series ended a long time ago.
It remains unclear to me when the production of this toy line began exactly. Would that have been 1995? I have to admit the same when it comes to the end year of their production. If you have some knowledge of this, please share it with us, as I would love to know more. When searching for information about these toys, I have come across several memories and mentions such as “Oh, these were the popular 1990s toys!” and so on. Based on this, my best guess is that the production of the Teeny Weeny Families toys started around 1995 and ended before the year 2000.
From inside, the teapot house is scarcely decorated.
The beloved toy has many names. In the case of Teeny Weenies, this saying is very much true, and it even goes to the brand level. These toys were actually sold around the world under more than one brand name for some reason. The original UK name of the series, which is Teeny Weeny Families, was used here in Finland as well. However, the toy series was also sold in other countries under these names: Itsy Bitsy Families, Mini Sweety, Mini Surprise Families, I Piccini Piccio.
I could understand translating the toy brand’s name when marketing them to another country, but why on earth invent so many different English names? I Piccini Piccio makes an exception, as it is Italian, and yes, this version was sold in Italy. I wonder if there are even more different names for these toys?
Some kitchen furniture can be found on the ground floor. There is also an unfurnished upper floor.
The height of the Hippity Hop Cafe bunnies is about 3 cm. Their size is roughly the same as for Polly Pocket dolls, which I have written about before. Teeny Weenies and Polly Pockets have a lot in common: they both live in a miniature plastic house that splits open in the middle. However, these brands should not be mixed up, as they are two different toys from two different manufacturers.
The miniature milieu of the teapot house is charming, just like the Polly Pockets’ world, but when it comes to the abundance of details, the Teeny Weenies are not quite up to the level of the Pollies. At least in this teapot house of mine, it is mostly empty inside, and the walls are not decorated in any way apart from the window stickers. There is a kitchen downstairs with some fixed furniture, such as a stove and a sink, but the upper floor is totally empty.
Ma Hoppit and Pa Hoppit have large feet. They stand securely holding their food and beverage trays without any external support.
The business owners of the Hippity Hop Cafe are called Ma Hoppit and Pa Hoppit. I don’t remember if there was a Finnish translation for these names at the time. I suspect that there probably was not. The extended family of Hoppit bunnies includes the following characters: Harry, Holly, Baby Sally, Grandma Hoppit, Uncle Floppy, Aunt Jenny, Emily Hoppit and Claudia Hoppit – all come with their individual backstories. The Hoppit family is big, but there are only two bunnies in this teapot playset. The other characters were sold separately.
Welcome to the Hippity Hop Cafe!
Apart from the Hippity Hop Cafe, I didn’t know much about the Teeny Weeny Families toys when I was a child and teenager in the 1990s. I didn’t play with them (as I mentioned in the beginning, I was a bit too old) and I don’t remember any of my friends having them. It was only now, as an adult, when I grasped the story of these toys a bit better.
In the background story of these toys, a group of little creatures moves into a deserted garden. They occupy some discarded household items there and form a village called Gardenville. In the shelter of their houses, the animals begin to run all kinds of business, such as a hotel and a beauty salon. There is also a school in their village. The hotel is in a longcase clock and the hotel keepers are mice, while the school works inside a shoe and the teachers are owls, and so on. In my opinion, the funniest item of the bunch is the iron, which transforms into a wedding church for frogs. It is not a very obvious combination!
The heyday of the Teeny Weeny Families took place in the last years of the 1900s – a long time ago perhaps, but some memories of them can still be found. If you would like to get to know this group of toys a little better, you can read a lot more about them here. The maker of this site has gathered a lot of information there about all the families, their houses, accessories, names and so forth.
If you have your own memories about playing with Teeny Weeny Families, please leave me a comment. It would be lovely to hear from you.
Old Toy Cabinet 
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