Move over Buffy, it’s Librarian Lady - Sunday Times - Times Online

Move over Buffy, it’s Librarian Lady - Sunday Times - Times Online: "Some 100,000 “Librarian Action Figures” have been sold in two years, even though her actions are restricted to raising a finger to her lips to command silence. A “deluxe” version, complete with desk and computer, arrives in British toyshops this autumn.

“She is the most successful original action figure since Harry Potter, more unexpected because she has not been promoted through a movie but largely by word of mouth,” said a spokesman for FPS, which monitors America’s £13 billion-a-year toy market. “It’s a very middle-class jokey gift.”

The £4 figurine, sales of which are overtaking rival female role models such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is based on Nancy Pearl, 60, who recently retired as a director in the Seattle public library system. The idea was born at a tipsy dinner party in 2002 when she suggested to a fellow guest, a toy-maker, that her undervalued profession needed a public hero.

“To my amazement, they took me up on it,” Pearl said last week. “I couldn’t decide what to wear when I was being ‘digitised’ (measured by a computer for the model) so I wore my work stuff, including my glasses. The result was rather realistic.”"