You know there are actually people out there who don't like self-checkouts? Won't use 'em if a regular checkout is available, get mad when they have to... man, I've run across some wrong opinions in my time, but that's the wrongest of the wrong. I will always pick a self-checkout over one with a cashier. I'm trying to make a purchase, not have a bloody conversation!
This is a nice little piece of furniture. It's 4" wide, and the scanner surface is only about 2½" off the ground - this is sized pretty well for 5" figures, but it's not entirely out of place with more common 6" toys, either. It's molded from yellow plastic, which the render on the back of the box suggests is supposed to be tan, like wood. That explains the vertical slats on the two opening cabinet doors. The tab that allows the taller door to open was either broken or mis-molded on mine, so it doesn't actually fit in properly, and the door will fall out if I'm not careful.
The left side of the piece has a shelf where you could set your items before paying, while the right has a holding area with a grey frame around it, the place you put your bags to fill them up. The scanning
area in the middle is impressive, for how simple it really is. The actual scanner part is just a sticker on the flat surface. The screen is a separate piece that plugs in, molded from the same grey as the bagging rack, and it's printed with a large white screen featuring an icon of a shopping basket and grey lines that are meant to represent text, a keypad, a card reader, and a printer to spit out coupons or receipts - you know, all the things you'd find on a real self-checkout stand!
Of course, a checkout isn't much use unless you're buying something, so this set has plenty of small extras. We begin with
a red shopping basket with a swinging white handle. When you're done shopping, you can hang that from a grey hook under the shelf, which seems a little odd: why would there be a space to hang a single empty basket, instead of just a space to stack multiples? Eh, whatever. We also get a reusable shopping bag, white with a red floral pattern. You might have expected that to be softgoods, but it's PVC. The handles are red, and the pattern is only painted on one side.
It may be the reason that I like self-checkouts is because I'm usually only buying a few items. Like, if it's more than can fit in one bag - maybe two - then it's time to use the real checkout. People who try to take a full-zied shopping cart through there are fools. And this set includes way more things than any good person should be trying to self-scan.
The items come from all throughout the grocery store. Most stores are laid out the same basic way: produce right by the entrance,
to psychologically prime shoppers to think of all the food as fresh and high quality, so we'll start with that. We get a bunch of five bananas, a prepackaged Cobb salad, a small tub of feta cheese, and a box of dried mango snacks. The the back of the toy's packaging, that one's shown as a bag, not a box, but obviously things changed at some point.
In the middle of the store, we find a bottle of oilive oil, and a jar of vegan pesto, both molded from translucent green plastic,
which is a nice look and honestly pretty impressive for a Teeny Tinites set.There's also a jar of sliced peaches, which is molded in translucent orange, but the effect is kind of rendered pointless by the label that's wrapped all the way around it. In a particularly nice touch, the lid on the jar is blue with lighter blue lines crossing on it, suggesting the way mass-produced jellies and preserves often have a gingham pattern on them.
Clearly the reason we were buying
olive oil and pesto was to go with our box of pre-made tortellini. That's just a molded block of plastic with a sticker on the front, but the box of butter chicken and frozen pizza are both actual folded cardboard. And as long as we're in the refrigerated area, might as well pick up a bottle of oat milk for breakfast tomorrow.
And of course, we finish our shopping trip in the bread aisle,
where we get the weirdest loaf of bread you've ever seen. Or not-seen, as the case may be: in order to make this look like a loaf od bread in a typical bag, it was molded in clear plastic and has a label on one side. The image on the back of the toy's box suggests the piece was then supposed to get brown paint, to actually look lie crust, but the final product is just perfectly clear. Okay, so there's a bit of a tint, but it's certainly not enough to create the look they were going for. This is a great sculpt, but the deco is a total fail.
With that disappointment you might as well pick your spirits up with a few impulse buys: a couple candy bars (one milk, one dark),
a pack of gum, a can of lavender lemonade, and a pre-packaged shortbread cookie. The cookie is done the same way as the bread, molded in clear plastic and then given a label on the front. I guess the idea is that you're looking not as a "label" but instead are seeing the cookie inside its plastic wrapper? It doesn't work great. Props for trying, but you didn't succeed.
So we've got 17 grocery items, and the very most you could fit into the shopping bag are five - and that's only if you're picking the very small ones! Heck, the pizza's so big, it won't fit in the bag at all! I, too, am guilty of sometimes getting more groceries than will fit in my one bag, but this is ridiculous. How did you even fit it all in the shopping basket, unknown shopper? There are fun items and detailed nicely, but the star of the set is the checkout itself, especially if you've got any of those Mini Brands or World's Smallest toy sets.
-- 05/24/26
Do you like self-checkouts, or do you have some sort of prion disease? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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