Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Overpriced, But Adorable, The 2016 Frosty Fun For You Ornament Set Surprises!


The Good: Very cute, Excellent sculpt and coloring detailing
The Bad: Incredibly expensive, Snowman is front heavy
The Basics: The 2016 "Frosty Fun For You" mini-ornament set is a fun gift, but way too expensive to bother buying!


There are few companies that come to mind that offer more freebies and premiums for spending money at their stores than Hallmark. While I suspect that the greeting card market is suffering, the ornament market that Hallmark Keepsake has made into a powerful business and a collectible industry seems to be thriving. As a result, fans who spend money at Hallmark stores at key times have a tendency to get freebies and premium ornaments. This year, some Hallmark Keepsake stores had open house events and with the purchase of a certain value and above, buyers at my local Hallmark were given a gift bag. Our gift bag included the 2016 Frosty Fun For You mini-ornament set.

The 2016 Frosty Fun For You mini-ornament set bears a price tag of $17.95 and for two mini-ornaments, that seems terribly expensive.

Basics

The Frosty Fun For You ornament set is a set of two mini-ornaments: a snowman and a penguin.

One of the two mini-ornaments is a snowman with his arms up, with the word "JOY" in front of him. The snowman has a scarf and winter hat and looks very happy. The mini-ornament is 1" tall, 1" wide and 5/8" deep. The snowman has glitter on his body and on the word "Joy," but not on his hat and scarf, so the coloring detail is shockingly precise for such a small ornament!

The penguin mini-ornament in the 2016 Frosty Fun For You set is adorable as it rides an innertube and has a cute blue scarf on its neck! The penguin is 11/16" tall and wide and 1" deep. The penguin is precisely colored to have clear delinieations between its black back, orange feet and white underbelly. The smiling face and open beak are both well-sculpted and precisely colored!

Features

As a Hallmark Keepsake mini-ornament set, "Frosty Fun For You" has neither a light, nor a sound effect. This is just the set of two mini-ornaments on their own with no additional features.

Balance

As with all ornaments, the intent of the Hallmark Keepsake "Frosty Fun For You" ornaments are to be hung on a Christmas tree. The snowman in the 2016 Frosty Fun For You mini-ornament set has a steel hook loop at the top of its hat. From there, the snowman hangs with a bit of a lean; the "JOY" at the front of the snowman makes it frontheavy. While the penguin is similarly frontheavy when hung from the steel hook loop near the back of the penguin, this is not so much a defect as it makes the penguin appear to be riding downhill on its inner tube!

Collectibility

Hallmark Keepsake began delving into the collectibles market in 1991 with Star Trek when it introduced the exceptionally limited edition original U.S.S. Enterprise ornament (reviewed here!). Within a few years, every major franchise from Star Wars to A Nightmare Before Christmas to Indiana Jones started making Hallmark ornaments. "Frosty Fun For You" is a non-genre ornament. Given the incredibly high release price it is unlikely that this mini-ornament set will appreciate in value. In fact, it is tough to believe that any stock of this ornament that is around at the end of the season and gets clearanced after the holiday would ever reach its release price again, so overpriced is this ornament set.

Overview

Hallmark has suddenly started making mini-ornaments and the high quality of mini-ornament sets like the 2016 Frosty Fun For You is hard to deny. But the cost of sets like the 2016 Frosty Fun For You are hard to justify, undermining their overall worth.

For other non-genre Hallmark ornaments, please check out my reviews of:
2016 On The Night You Were Born
2016 Holiday Celebration Barbie ornament
2015 Heat Miser The Year Without Santa Claus ornament

7/10

For other ornament reviews, please visit my Ornament Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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