On the 15th October 2016, Epoch and Highlights PR held an event, exclusive for Sylvanian Families Premium Fan Club Members. As both a "Friends of Sylvanian Families" blogger and a Premium Fan Club Member myself, I attended the event at intu Lakeside Shopping Centre. People from across Britain attended the event, with one family driving all the way from Ireland!
Upon arriving at the event at 9am, I was met with a giant Sylvanian Families car! Freya Chocolate and her little sister Crème were sat ready to have photos with all those who came to visit!
Entering the main event, many Epoch staff asked me about my collection and encouraged my involvement with the products which made me feel welcome. I met a 90cm Ralph Walnut in the queue as I went to sign myself and my friends in for the day.
Each Premium Fan Club Member were given lanyards as a gift. One side had a picture of Freya, Ralph and Tiffany whilst the other side at a check list of what tasks each person had completed in the day. Each guest was also presented with a goody bag which I will show in great detail later on.
First I completed the dress-making, where every Member got given a dress of their choosing and accessories to add to them (as seen on the back of the lanyard). All pieces had double-sided tape on them, making it an easy process to add the individual pieces together, especially for the younger children. Some of the Sylvanian girls were modelling these dresses on the table. The packaging was in Japanese, which as a collector I thought was very cute.
The next activity was...Aquabeads! Each person could create the image of either Freya Chocolate, Ralph Walnut or Tiffany Golightly!
There were various signs and displays located around the event, including a display of recent Sylvanian Families products, a play table and a colouring table with Sylvanian-themed colouring sheets.
As you may have gathered from the sign, there was a model of the Sylvanian Village on display. It was large, however claiming it was a scale model was a bit misleading as there are lots of bigger displays, including the one from the Tokyo Toy Fair in 2014. But still, it was a pretty cute display!
There was three "meet & greet" sessions, in which we watched the Sylvanian Families Live Show before getting to meet the characters for hugs and photos! I have uploaded a video of the Sylvanian Families' song "Every Happiness" performed at the third show of the event for those unlucky to not have attended a show to see!
In between the shows were two games: the first was "Corners" and the second was "Pose and Pause". I won't give the details of the games, but I will say well done to the ten lucky winners! The five winners of "Corners" were lucky enough to each win a 30cm Freya Chocolate with Christmas outfit!!! The five winners of "Pose and Pause" won different prizes: 3rd, 4th and 5th place all won a building, family and medium-sized object such as the Hot Dog Wagon. 2nd place won a building, two families and two medium-sized objects, and 1st place won a building, three families, three medium-sized objects AND a Seasider Cruzer with Freya in her shell dress!
As one of the activities we had to collect a colouring book containing loads of colouring sheets of Sylvanian scenes from Hamleys, who had a 20% off day in light of the event, so I bought baby Ambrose Walnut in her new Epoch outfit.
I also got to watch the Sylvanians go up in the lift...
Before going home I had to take more photos with Freya and Crème! ;)
For those who do not know what the goody bags look like from Sylvanian Families events, here are some photos! The goody bag is double-sided, one side depicting Freya and the other depicting five Chocolate rabbits. This bag had a lot more included than normal goody bags! Included were three sheets of stickers, two colouring sheets, a notebook that contained a dot-to-dot and image to colour and more stickers, a stencil/ruler, playing cards, a spot the difference and another on-sheet puzzle, a foldable poster with character names on (much like the old Tomy and Flair ones but with modern characters), some adverts for the club and Brick Oven Bakery and a red/pink dress that is otherwise only available on the exclusive shop for the Japanese version of the Premium Fan Club! I also picked up colouring sheets from the table in the morning and some extra dress-making kits with accessories as there were several left spare at the end of the event!
I really enjoyed the event and can't wait for a future one! I hope anyone else who went enjoyed themselves and keep a lookout for future Epoch/Highlights events!
UPDATE: I forgot to include images of the dress-making kits I brought home. Two dresses pictured I completed at the event & the other three I shall make in a tutorial later this year.