Night of the Living Bread.

Japanese capsule toys continue to be a never-ending source of answers to questions no one thinks to ask a lot of the time, such as “How do I use a defibrillator?” or “What would my cat look like if it were a sheep?”

And know we can put an end to the mystery of what various baked goods would look like if they had legs.

The answer is: very cute.

▼ Top row left to right: loaf of bread, pretzel, croissant.
Bottom row left to right: dinner roll, baguette, melon bread.

Actually this question had already been answered by Hatena, the artist who originally crafted these little guys in their specialty medium of wool felt.

The concept of this Ikiteru Pan (“Living Bread”) series is that the artist loves bread very much, and since it’s so readily available they can eat it all the time. But since eating too much might be bad for their health, if the bread ran around on four legs it’d be harder to catch, and therefore they wouldn’t be able to eat it as much.

The wooly buns became very popular, but at 5,000 yen ($44) a piece, they were a little hard to purchase. But now Hatena has teamed up with capsule toy maker Qualia to recreate the entire series in plastic. Hatena says that the biggest challenge was maintaining the same freshly baked puffy quality in the new medium, but feels that they accomplished it in the end.

▼ If you look closely you can see they all have little mouths too!

Ikiteru Pan can be found at capsule machines all over Japan for 300 yen ($2.66) a crank. On the other hand, if you prefer the non-randomized and softer feel of a real felt Ikiteru Pan, they are still being sold through Hatena’s Gallery on the website Minne, which is like the Japanese version of Etsy.

That’s really adorable and all, but what I really want to know what various animals would look like if they had huge chins and— oh, they already did that? How about… I wonder what a hippo using a toilet would loo— oh, that’s been done too, eh?

Source: Qualia
Images: ©atelier hatena
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