This is not the first time the store has fallen on hard times, with the collapse of their roof and a flood at its former location. But Crescenzi says those troubles were overcome with the loyalty and financial generosity of a few customers. She jokingly calls these donors the store’s “board members.”

Crescenzi says that customers have not just found unique toys in her bright blue- and yellow-painted basement store—two customers who met at the wind-up counter got married soon after.

And Funny Farm’s closing will deprive the Square of one of its wackiest decorations—its lamppost-hugging mannequins.

The three boldly-dressed mannequins—“Heather,” “Pauline” and now “Madeleine”—have become a trademark of the gag shop, but to Crescenzi they are just part of the family.

“They were the first full-time workers besides me,” Crescenzi says.

When two co-workers got married a few years ago, Crescenzi performed the service and the mannequins were bridesmaids.

While a staple of Eliot Street, Heather, Pauline and Madeleine have not always been a welcomed part of the Cambridge community.

Crescenzi still keeps a sign that several years back was left on one of the mannequins, reading, “Whoever put this here is blasphemy against God and his people.”

Funny Farm has even kept its plastic, female friends, despite burdensome regulations handed down by the City of Cambridge.

The store was forced to buy insurance for them and tie them to the lamppost, to prevent them from falling over and hurting somebody.

Crescenzi says she is “a little bit panicked” about what she will do after the store closes on Christmas Eve—or where she will play.

“I don’t play a lot at home so it was very important to have it at work,” she says. “It’s about respecting the human spirit and the value of play.”

—Staff writer Anne K. Kofol can be reached at kofol@fas.harvard.edu.