I noticed this because my 6-year-old stepson totes three to school, and his doll games are all about adventure. He and his mates pile their Uglies into a plastic crate named the Voyager and soar off. "We go to Persia," he said, "or a pet shop. One time we went into the sewers to go surfing." In his class, it's the boys - plus the one tomboy - who love Uglydolls, said his teacher, Scott Cunningham. "And if you want to see an avatar, this is it," he said. "The kids do their speaking through them." Many girls like them, too, but there is no doubt that there is something preternatural about the boy-Ugly bond. The Pretty Ugly company, which recently sold its millionth doll, knows it, said Alita Friedman, director of operations. "It wasn't deliberate," she said. "It just happened." F. A. O. Schwarz, toy store to the hedge-funded, also recognizes it. Its famous stuffed toy department in Manhattan - including nearly life-size elephant calves - is gender-neutral. But one flight up the escalator, and it is girls' stuff to the right and boys' to the left. The Uglydolls are not only firmly to the left, but next to the National Football League action figures and directly across from the Star Wars light sabers guarding the action figure of Princess Leia in a serpentine brass bikini - which is about as boy-fantasy as it gets. Pretty Ugly receives thank-you e-mail messages from parents of boys. "My 9-year-old son loves his Uglydolls," wrote one parent. "He is an only child and I watch him being so caring with them and it warms my heart." Fran Brennan, a freelance writer in Washington, said one of her son's friends wore his smallest Uglies around his neck. "I thought it was so cool that he felt comfortable wearing them on a cord, like a choker," she said. So what is it, exactly? The Uglies are neither superheros nor stuffed animals. They're not as saccharine as Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch kids. They're a bit like characters from Sesame Street (Cookie Monster comes to mind) and a bit like E.T., except without pasty skin or the spring-loaded neck. David Horvath, who created them with Sun-Min Kim - then his girlfriend, now his wife - says they were inspired by the bootleg videos they both grew up watching: Japanese robots and shows like "Battle Fever J," which begat the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The inspiration for Uglies, he joked, was Ultraman and Gamera. That's hard to buy, since they are the antithesis of huggable: Ultraman is Japan's metal-skulled Ironman, vanquishing monsters with karate kicks and electric bolts that slice heads off. Gamera is a giant flying turtle whose leg holes shoot flames. Actually, part of the appeal is that Uglies are not based on TV characters; the only back-story a buyer gets is a tag with a few sentences on it. But the most obvious clue is simple: Of the 25 "classic" creatures, all but three are male, with names like OX, Wedgehead and Chuckanucka. (The description tags say "he.") And most are naughty little guys who steal (or "borrow"), embark on a "ninja-type mystery adventure" or liberate all snack food. Gary Cross, a professor of modern history at Penn State who follows toy trends, said Uglies echoed boys' needs, and boys themselves. "Boys need figures to play with," he said. "You see that going back to the Egyptians. But they become über-male when they reach that 5-to-7-year-old range. It's O.K. to hug something, but it may not be to have a little teddy bear." Getting away with being naughty is a boy's way of proving himself lovable, he said, citing the Katzenjammer Kids, Buster Brown, Curious George and Dennis the Menace. Marjorie Taylor, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, said the dolls could be subtly signaling "I'm for boys." As an example, she cited researchers who made a toy tea set black and spiky, prompting boys to ask for it. The dolls' faces (Uglies don't smile, but some show teeth or stick out tongues) may tell boys they're kindred spirits, she said. Even the girl Uglydolls signal something to boys. Moxy is cool - she is OX's baby sister, a party animal with a motherly streak. But Tray is "the brain of the bunch," and good at getting poor dumb Babo to fetch her blueberry pie. Puglee "is super smart" and "gets all A's no matter how hard she tries." Exactly the way a lot of boys experience first grade. Little sisters must be suffered, but girls as peers are a foreign race: smarter, a bit unfathomable - and a lot better at managing boys than the other way around. The dolls are not specifically marketed to boys. But in their early days, they weren't even marketed to children. Mr. Horvath and Ms. Kim met as art students, but when her visa expired in 2001, she had to move back to South Korea. Lonely and upset because toy companies were snubbing his ideas, Mr. Horvath drew one of his characters on the bottom of his love letters: Wage, a little orange everyman in an apron who works in a supermarket. As a Christmas present, Ms. Kim sewed him one. A friend who had just opened Giant Robot, a Los Angeles store specializing in Asian pop culture, asked if she could make 20. At first, she didn't own a sewing machine, so it took weeks. They sold out in a day. She bought a machine and made more. After 1,500, with her cramping hands regularly changing colors, they knew they had to find a factory. SINCE 2003, Uglies have been made in China, but their faces are still hand-sewn, which is why a row on a shelf all look slightly different - off-center eyes or slightly crooked grins. In New York, said Ms. Friedman, Uglies were first sold at the Whitney and MoMA gift shops, Toy Tokyo, Jim Hanley's Universe comics and Barneys. Adults bought them for fun or décor - a $20 throw pillow with personality. Soon, she said, "kids with cool parents got a hold of them." The boy connection was solidified by their first marketing venue: a 2003 San Diego comic book convention, where audiences are mostly male. "We had a Come as Your Favorite Uglydoll contest," Ms. Friedman said. "It was all boys." Last weekend, with his mother's help, my stepson sewed his own ugly doll. It's orange and cuddly. And named Blaster. | 
