SANDglobe. Total genius. While many globes are standard city settings, this one raises the bar by offering what Arizona actually has - sand and snakes. Doesn't make for good shaking but that's ok.

To be fair, in 12 years of living in Arizona, I remember only seeing one snake. But they were out there, everyone knew. Rattlers. I never knew anyone bit by one. My boss did step on a scorpion that was in his bedroom though. The smaller they are the more deadly, or at least the more "venom" or whatever scorps got. The hospital didn't know what to do (!) so they gave him a tetnous (sp) shot like he had stepped on a rusty nail. A mean, six-legged nail with pinchers.

My other Arizona globe does have snow against the cactus. It snowed twice while I was living there, once in December, once on Easter Morning. Freaky but gone by 11am.

One summer in between 7th and 8th grade, before I moved to AZ, me and my parents went to the Grand Canyon. I bought a cassette of Motley Crue's "Theater of Pain" and was convinced I was the first kid in my school to own the tape. I thought anything from Arizona was cool. We came back and I wasn't the coolest, everyone had the record. And it sucked.

Let's admit it: this is not the most powerful followup to the At-At Walker. But this style has a lot going for it. Traditional snowglobe, half-circle, with 1)interchanagable plastic representations of city/state, and 2) background. This would show that 1)cactus and 2) desert are vital to understanding Arizona. And by having a traditional structure, you have an easy way to compare and contrast each city/state.

I lived in Tucson for 12 years and this is exactly how it was. Great little city.