I want this.

This weekend I was lucky to actually be with my dad for Father's Day! It was fantastic, and the weekend was filled with as many childhood stories as you might expect. I was maybe feeling a bit nostalgic, because this bad boy stopped me in my tracks today.

When we were little, going to any shopping mall required a drive, and the way we'd distinguish between them was "the hippo mall," or all the other ones (lack of hippos did not make for memorable shopping trips).

The hippo mall had, as you may have guessed, a hippo.

This hippo was made of bronze (well, probably just something that looked like bronze), about 15' long, and had no legs. The lack of legs made it comfortably close to the ground, and possible for even the smallest kids to scramble on its back. I'd like to know who the first person was to decide this, but by the time the hippo was a part of our lives there was an understood order to it: you scramble up his back end, scoot yourself along his spine (surprisingly tricky since the bronze was shiny and slippery from said scooting), push yourself over his ears, and slide down the nose, getting a surprising amount of momentum. Over and over and over.

P.S. If Target ever makes a knockoff of this like they have some of his other animals, SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME.