Big houses floated away like bathtub toys.

How these ubiquitous bathtub toys remained afloat for more than 15 years isn't much of a mystery.

The group's name evoked, as People magazine commented, "a line of bathtub toys".

The Rolvaag, for all its bulk, looked like a child's bathtub toy in the black water of the bay.

With their upturned bows, striking primary colors and tiny windows set in square wooden cabins, they resembled bathtub toys from a bygone era.

Some hit, the heavy stones breaking canoes apart like bathtub toys in the hands of an angry child.

Footloose tourists waved from the docks then, and the commercial fishing boats, their hardware atwinkle, resembled giant bathtub toys.

Bright yellow, it looked like a child's bathtub toy sitting on a deck of oildrums.

Miles from a protective harbor, in the darkest hours before dawn, hundreds of boats were heaved about like bathtub toys and more than 75 capsized.

The trade-off is that you look like a floating bathtub toy, and feel as if you were nestled in a cushy Barcalounger.