Do you want to build a snowman?

Me, neither, but apparently somebody around here did. We got a nothing storm last week, three inches tops, all very powdery stuff. Great for skiing, not very good for making snowmen.

I did see one, a small one at a house around the corner, where a hyperactive toddler lives with his hyperactive grandfather. But that snowman did not have a dapper hat, just a rag smushed on his head. Somewhere, some snowdude did -- because I found it, about a mile in the other direction.

Actually Junior Varsity dog Nipper found it while we were making the rounds. It was in the snowy street, crushed into a wedge, a cardboard hat that when new would have approximated the hat in the illustration. Our neighborhood is very windy in the winter, painfully so, and this is not a great place for putting hats on snowmen. You can't really pin them in place. And since we saw no evidence of any snowpersons in the area, I presume it landed there after a long flight.

This hat was the crowning touch and, I think, container for the Build a Snowman Kit, as you can see, which also included a scarf, a carrot nose, two big button eyes, and six smaller buttons to make the mouth. There was a plastic sheath in the hat that I think held that stuff. According to the label, this kit was made in China by Horizon Group; their Web site has a lot of kid stuff, but I didn't see this exact item. It has a $5 price right on the label, but I can't tell who the retailer was. They sell to a lot of big box stores and online stores. I'm guessing this came from our local Target. Has a Targety feel.

It occurred to me that this could have represented the end of Frosty. As you know from the song, and the subsequent TV special, Frosty the Snowman was animated when children placed a magic hat on his head. In the TV show, when the hat was blown off or removed, he reverted in inert snow form. As weaknesses go, that's a lot worse than kryptonite or the color yellow, especially in a windy neighborhood.

Of course there are other magically animated snowpeople out there. The movie Frozen features that pest Olaf, voiced by bigger pest Josh Gad; while Olaf is afraid of melting it seems unlikely that even melting would even kill him. And he wears no clothing, the naked twit. During the first film -- and I will never see the sequel -- he is subject to all kinds of physical mayhem but it doesn't hurt him a bit. In fact, he seems to have been around since Elsa created him when she was a child, although he must have lived through twenty summers. No, it makes no sense. But I suspect when Elsa dies he will too, or at least one could hope. Humanity has got plenty of other punishments for our sins already; we don't need an immortal snow weenie.

Naturally the role-playing classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons has snow monsters like the Snow Golem, a creature used as a guard by a wizard in colder adventures. I don't recall facing one in my gamer days, but he looks formidable to low-level parties. If you have someone who is a high enough level to cast a Fireball, you can probably take him out quick. Anyway, while the Snow Golem has an armor class of 13 due to his natural armor, he does not wear hats. Although if I were running the campaign I might up his stats but give him a magical animating top hat -- the hat would be hard to hit, but a good shot that takes it off immediately turns him back to snow.

I detected no magic from the hat we found. I would feel pretty bad if I thought this was Frosty's magic hat, because right after I took these pictures it went into the garbage. I know, I know, it was a snazzy chapeau, but come on. It was literally in the gutter.

Hey! Maybe Frosty was in the gutter with it, spread all over the place!

Man, alcoholic snowmen are the worst.

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UPDATE! Just by chance I was in Target this very Saturday, and look what I found!

This tells me that A) the thing I found probably was bought there, exactly as I thought, and B) the hat is supposed to be a beat-up bum hat; its condition was not purely the result of rough usage by wind and gutter.