Greetings! I see you're on Joelle Duran's favorites list and since she's got good taste in writing, I'll give you a shot. I'll comment as I read.

1.) "Paul thought for a moment, and then said, "but, if we could be taken at any time, doesn’t it make more sense to just enjoy our time in the store and make friends with the other products?" " -- I'm really enjoying this story and I like how you're dealing with the big issues of life even in this silly context. However, the grammar freak in me wishes that you remembered to capitalize "But", since it starts a spoken sentence.

2.) " The cheese chimed in, saying, "what good are friends when they could be gone any day?! We’d best use our time to discuss intelligent things, like physics. " -- HAHAHA! Did this line ever crack me up! (Yes, I'm a geek.) But again, you really should capitalize "What".

3.) "The sobbing milk snapped at him miserably, "you certainly are full of questions " -- Okay, I promise not to comment again, but go back through and fix this simple capitalization mistake. In general, if a character (or milk carton!) is starting a spoken sentence, you capitalize the first letter of it, even if the written sentence started earlier. Got it? If you're confused or think I'm bonkers, feel free to email me about it.

4.) "trust in the Another Place" -- This sounds awkward, with the "the" in there. Can you rephrase? Actually, I see that you continue to use it, but it continues to sound strange. Maybe just "the Other Place" or "Another Place" (without the "the") would sound smoother?

5.) "The brands and the brandless, all lived together in the store" -- You don't need this comma.

Wow. That goes from light-hearted to serious in an instant! But I enjoy (and share, at least mostly) the sentiment you're getting across in this piece. It was a neat idea to take a childish scene (walking and talking toys) and use it to dig into the deeper questions of real life. And good job never dropping the metaphor, by the way.

Well done! Thanks for the tale!
-- Ruatha

When I first read the summary, I thought it would be something rather like 'Courdoroy(sp?) Bear'. However, this was a really refreshing and energizing look at life. Personally,I liked the character of the cat the best. You pulled off this sense of spirituality and faith really well. Great job! :)