It’s time to take another deep, dark look into one of the critters who infest The Nest with a healthy dose of fuckeduppedness in our Thursday Meet the Critters series!  We’re into our fifth month, and still have plenty of fresh faces to try and find a best side for… and this week, we’re going to take a look at the Shelf’s designated ovine and see why there’s something about Mary…

Are you calling me a sweet tart, honey?

NAME: Mary Mutton.  Her last name hasn’t been used since her debut episode (see below)…

SPECIES: Sheep, though she prefers to be called a lamb because a lamb sounds much more adorable than a sheep.

SHELF PERSONALITY: Mary is the biggest tease on the Shelf.  She’s cute and she knows it, and uses that to her advantage to get what she wants out of the malecritters.  Consider Mary to be a more sarcastic and brainier version of Mitzi…

You know studmuffin, it you’d rather play with bags full of silicone, there’s some plastic Jello cups in the fridge I can get for you…

RUNNING GAGS: Because Mitzi is already established as SCT’s official sex kitten, Mary is extremely jealous of her and often looks to put Mitzi down while flaunting her own natural adorability over Mitzi’s bimbo makeup.  Her sweet, seductive eyes draw the men in like flies, but unlike with her rival, it’s always up in the air whether Mary’s in the mood to be a baaaaaaaad girl or not.

Aw, Santa. I am so going to hold this photo against you in a few years…

ESN PREMIERE: Amazingly, I never considered pulling Mary off the Shelf for even a cameo until last Fall’s episode “Talentless Show,” where I intentionally brought a bunch of my previously unused critters out of the bleachers to audition for a role in Shelf Critter Theatre.  Although, like the rest of the contestants that day, Mary met a bad ending… she was the only newbie from that American Idol parody to break out and become a semi-regular character in the series.  In that episode, she was billed as Mary Mutton, though the last name has never come up again…

The Kelly Pickler of Shelf Critter Theatre.

ICONIC SCT ROLE: Mary hasn’t had any starring roles yet, though maybe her best appearance came in this year’s Easter episode “Bad Eggs,” where she helps the clueless Bad Santa learn how to do the absent Easter Bunny’s job.  It doesn’t work out very well, but a good time was still had by all…

You look cute in those bunny ears, Santa! Now we just need to find you some fishnets.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?: Mary just seemed like a natural name for a lamb given the nursery rhyme that her and Mitzi helped skewer last week.  She just looks like a Mary.

You’d never see Lamb Chop dancing for dollars. At least on PBS…

WHAT IS SHE?: Like a lot of her SCT brethren, Mary was once just a common, ordinary Happy Meal toy distributed by McDonald’s.  She is a Littlest Pet Shop bobblehead critter from a 2011 promotion that, so far as I can tell, has no official name.

WHERE DID SHE COME FROM?: Almost certainly from my Happy Meal ordering mother, though I don’t know when or why Mary came into my possession.

There’s a lot of things from our past that we’d like to forget ever happened.

CAN I GET ONE TOO?: Absolutely, if you wanted to pay $4 for her plus over double that in shipping and “handling” charges.  I also discovered that there is apparently a blog dedicated to McDonald’s Happy Meal toys throughout the years that boasts posts on at least 10,000 individual toys.  Here’s the page for Mary.  Unfortunately, Mary doesn’t have a “story” for her write-up… and I have a feeling the blogger would not want to include any of Mary’s escapades on The Shelf in her bio, though I’d imagine that prevert Grimace would appreciate reading what she’s up to…

You wanna see my private sex tape of me and the Hamburglar in between the buns? Robble robble.

I’ll feature another critter next Thursday who is just too cute for their own good…