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French company Ludendo recently purchased London’s most famous toy store Hamleys which is 250 years old. So on Monday evening I went down with my journalist friend Dylan to look for early signs of the French invasion…

Traditionally Hamleys is a very English store. For example this is the left-hand side of their foyer…

You have tables of Paddington Bear toys, racks of teddy Beefeaters, Union Jack merchandise and a giant spinning crown. Even the wall-paper has famous London attractions on it.

Then as you enter the store you are greeted by the Royal Wedding made out of LEGO…

That little Japanese girl standing next to Prince Charles isn’t made out of LEGO, she’s actually real. I waited for her to move before taking the photo but she just stayed there…

By the way – Is it controversial to mention Kate Middleton on my TÊTU blog? I know that you guys aren’t in her good books right now. Talking of books…

Hamleys has a book section where you can find very English books. Below you can see the “GREAT BRITISH COLOURING BOOK” and “This is Britain”. They also have “Dress Up Kate“, a Kate Middleton sticker book that allows you to cover up Kate’s breasts with a selection of sticky garments. All in all – very English…

So far the French book section is pretty minimal…

But in other areas of Hamleys the French takeover is more prominent. For example the cuddly toy section which has three different types of frog…

The Disney Section is gradually becoming more French too. Here you can see Sebastian, the French lobster from the Little Mermaid, his position among the other Disney figurines seemed quite prominent on Monday night. You had to look long and hard to find Mulan…

I said to Dylan “At least in our version Sebastian the lobster is French. Presumably in the French version everyone is French?Therefore is Sebastian English in the French version?”

To which a young girl stopped, turned around and said “ACTUALLY he’s a CRAB not a lobster, and he’s not French he’s Jamaican. The chef who chases after him is French”. So that told us.

Ursula is still the most cool though, which is why there was only one Ursula left on the shelf, I imagine every lesbian bathroom in London has an Ursula sitting on the edge of the bath tub. I love Ursula.

Then we found the clock Cogsworth from Beauty And The Beast  - he’s French right…

Actually no, he looks kind of French but it’s the candlestick Lumière who is French. So far our French Hamleys mission wasn’t going too well.

Then we arrived at the names section – name signs to put on childrens bedroom doors etc, and were surprised to find “CHAMPS” on one of them…

As you can see – they’ve started slipping the occasional French name into the mix. Or at least I’ve never met anyone in England whose name is Champs? Nor has Dylan and he’s from Devon where people call their children pretty much anything. We’re both quite middle class though. Maybe there are boys called Champs at Eton.

Time to go upstairs…

There’s Spiderman’s arse creeping into view. Spiderman’s definitely a power bottom. He’s actually spinning on a motor as well, I had to wait until his arse was facing the camera.

This giant Playmobil figurine is French, he’s wearing a Breton jumper look…

There were loads of French Playmobil people but we couldn’t be bothered to photograph them, they’re such attention whores with their little smiles and cool hair.

Then regardez! A roboticised poodle…

Poodles aren’t actually French, but poodles having fancy hair originates from France apparently.

Then we had to make a decision. PARTY TIME or PUZZLES? ….

They should have these in gay bars!

ANOTHER DRINK or COCK

CIGARETTE or DANCE TO KE$HA

We chose the puzzles room, and look what we found there…

…only the Eiffel bloody Tower! We swear that wasn’t in the case last time we went to Hamleys. By Christmas I bet Hamleys will be selling 3D puzzles of Versailles and the Louvre.

We decided to take a break from spotting French things for a while and play. Dylan chatted up this hot medieval soldier…

Meanwhile I wrote Frère Jack on the magma-doodles. Hey – free publicity…

After about an hour inside Hamleys we started to go a bit insane with all the bright lights, primary colours and happy music. Everything started to seem a French. For example, is this toy below of William Shakespeare or the French serial killer Gilles De Rais:

??? Who knows.

Then just as we were leaving we suddenly heard the voices of French children. “We’re actually going insane” said Dylan, “Let’s go and get some dinner”. But no – we weren’t imagining it, we spotted these two French kids…

Having their photo taken with the LEGO Queen. The little girl’s top says BONJOUR on it while the boy looks just like a French farmer from Poitiers or somewhere, it was surreal. I blacked their faces out because of this thing we have in England called media law and libel.

And that was all that we could find in Hamleys that looked French – not much! They don’t even sell anything Asterix or Tin Tin! You guys should write an angry letter to Hollande.

Next on Frère Jack we’ll be interviewing some more GFLs (Gay French Londoners) so look out for that!

You can follow Dylan on Twitter @DylanBJones, he likes hot French men, especially slightly older ones. And you can follow me as ever @jackcullenuk

That’ll be all for now, a bien tôt!

Frère Jack -x-

TÊTU ARTICLE OF THE DAY: I like this French write-up Les Gays Degoutants on TÊTU about Bret Easton Ellis controversially agreeing with Paris Hilton’s dumb comments about Grindr. Bret’s looking a bit podgy and old in that photo though. I also liked the hot photo in this article on TÊTU today.