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When The Merch goes Fun Size. It seems anyone and everything you can think of has a plushie toy based on it, especially in Japan when it comes to Anime and Video Game characters (minor or major). These can be official or fan made.
Although they are mostly toys, they are still featured on shows, especially fan made works.
Compare Girls Love Stuffed Animals.
Examples of Everything's Better with Plushies include:
Anime and Manga[]
- Inuyasha plushies
- These were available at Hot Topic for a short time.
- A plushie hand puppet of Haruhi Suzumiya was featured in the Omake videos of the DVD release.
- There are Death Note plushies. For, say, L or Ryuk or Misa, that works. For Light...
- Plus Near had finger puppets of them all in-universe...
- Ever wanted your own personal mole-pig? Presenting Boota from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann!
- There is a Yoko plushie, but sadly it isn't plush in... certain areas.
- There are also plushies of Simon and Kamina.
- Yu Yu Hakusho plushies exist.
- Tenjho Tenge plushes exist.
- Mahou Sensei Negima has a few plushies.
- There are Ouran High School Host Club plushies out there. In the series we have Honey's bunny plushie Usa-chan and Tamaki's teddy bear Kuma-chan.
- Byakuya plushies.
- Alucard plushie!
- K-On!! plushies exist, and they are utterly adorable.
- Thanks to the release of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 1st and its related merchandising, Nanoha and Fate now come in cute plushie form.
- One chapter of Keroro Gunsou has Keroro turning himself into a plush toy as part of his latest evil scheme.
- Katekyo Hitman Reborn plushies have been spotted in Sweet Kitty at least.
- In Cardcaptor Sakura, there is a plushie in Sakura's room that looks exactly like her. It was made by her best friend Tomoyo, and had one of those cosplay-like dresses even before Sakura became a Magical Girl.
- Kero-chan.
- Recently a plushie of Beatrice has been made.
- Kyubey plushies. They exist.
- Tachikoma plushies, or as they're commonly refered to- Plushikomas. Ironically, the blue one is the rarest one to find.
Comic Books[]
- You just knew it was going to happen eventually. (Warning: do not click the last link if you are offended by plush blue penises.)
- Marvel Comics Plushies.
- It is possible to find patterns for a Bamf; that is a defictionalized plushie version of Nightcrawler.
- In-universe, the Titans sold likeness rights in the early nineties (which, by this time, is probably around 2003 or so) so floating around somewhere in The DCU are Starfire, Nightwing, and Beast Boy plushies.
- Some now exist of Scott and Ramona.
Film[]
- There's a line of Godzilla plush dolls made by a company called Toy Vault. Not only do they make plushies of well-known Kaiju such as Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan, but they also produce plushies of more obscure monsters such as Gabara, King Seesar, and even the completely evil Destoroyah.
- There's a line of plush toys that are based upon the Alien franchise. These include the Chestburster, Dog-Alien Chestburster, the Queen Chestburster, and a Facehugger. While they are adorable versions of a monstrous fetus that emerges violently from one's chest, they're probably NOT the best thing to give your children as a gift.
- Spencer's Gifts once sold Dr. Frank N Furter dolls that played a sample of the Time Warp when squeezed (Why they didn't play Frank's trademark song, Sweet Transvestite is beyond me). They're now very hard to find and are considered highly collectible by Rocky Horror fans.
- Spencer's Gifts now sells plushies of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Leatherface. And they're simply... um... adorable?
- There is a fan-made plush doll of Agent Smith and Elrond (Elrohir supports this); no Mitzi though. They were quite possibly from here several years ago.
- There are commercially available plushie versions of the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
- As well as the Black Knight, with Velcro limbs.
- Kevin Smith is proud to sell you Mooby The Golden Calf.
- You can buy a plushie Iorek Byrnison and golden monkey based on the movie The Golden Compass. You know, because that monkey was so lovable and cuddly.
Literature[]
- Phear Plushie Cthulhu. They also come in such variants as Elvis Cthulhu Mythos, Miskatonic graduate Cthulhu, vacation Cthulhu, and Christmas Cthulhu (with a little Santa hat and jingle bells on its tentacles).
- The Call of Cthulhu RPG supplement Secrets of Japan deliberately invoked this trope with Cthulhu, suggesting that a plushie doll made by cultists of Cthulhu could become possessed with the malevolent spirit of its Cosmic Horror namesake.
- In the age before the films, Harry Potter had plushies out of the Golden Trio and their pets, though in the case of owls, there were about five different kinds and they had scrolls attached to their feet. Each scroll had a different message.
- There is now a Phantom of the Opera plushie created by Chérie Shulter and El Gibbs. They are true to the original book by Gaston Leroux and are adorable to true "phans" and slightly strange to others.
Live Action TV[]
- Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger exists. There were plushie toys of Zyuranger when it was airing (that even appeared in a late episode).
- And there are some for Power Rangers, or at least were.
- The Adipose from the Doctor Who episode "Partners in Crime" exist. There are plushie Adipose.
- Soon to come are plushie Daleks! Quite possibly the cutest thing that will ever EXTERMINATE you. Also available is a plushie TARDIS.
- Angel: Smile Time
- And yes, you can get one yourself!
- Odd (and hilarious) in-universe example/subversion: In one episode, Earth insists that Babylon 5 put a gift shop on board. The thing that finally kills it is when Ivanova shows Captain John Sheridan a teddy bear dressed up in baseball attire, with a Babylon 5 cap and a baseball uniform listing his name as "Bearbylon" and his number as 5. Sheridan finds it cute, until he sees the initials "JS" stitched to the front. He spaces the teddy bear posthaste.
- Reality Subtext: The bear was a gift to J. Michael Straczynski (yes, he has the same initials as his main character, why do you think that's weird?), from a friend who knew all about JMS's hatred of all things cute and cuddly. The spacing was retribution for the gift.
- The conveyor belt round in The Generation Game always featured a cuddly toy as one of the items.
- From The Big Bang Theory comes a plush made out of one of their more Memetacular moments: the Soft Kitty!
Newspaper Comics[]
- Older Than Television. Since 1925, Alfred the penguin is the pet of French young globetrotters Zig et Puce. In early 1927, a plushy Alfred toy was merchandised: it launched a huge Alfred craze all over France. When aviator Charles Lindbergh achieved his historical transatlantic flight to Paris that year, he was given an Alfred plushy and brought it with him as a mascot in his flight from Paris to Brussels. Since Everything's Better with Plushies and Everything's Better with Penguins, you just can't go wrong with a plushy penguin.
- Famously Averted Trope with Calvin and Hobbes. For obvious reasons, merchandisers were very interested in making Hobbes plushies. Since Hobbes was a plushie in-universe, this would have counted as Defictionalization. However, Bill Waterson was deadset against any merchandising of his strip and went to great lengths to prevent the syndicate from doing so.
Real Life[]
- Food in felt plush form. Japan has also made plushies of the ideal shape of poo. ...No, we don't know why either.
- Subeta have heavily parodied both situations as items. When you get a taco beanbag, and a ham plushie, it's just because they love this trope.
- Airbus A380s exist. You can buy plushies of Singapore Airlines A380s aboard Singapore Airlines flights.
- Anybody want plush GIAN Tmicrobes? You can get them here! They even have plush sperm and egg cells wearing blue and pink bows, respectively.
- Or how about these lovely d20s for your mirror? Careful about this one, folks; he'll bite your ankles off! And be even more careful of this one... looks pretty vicious, doesn't it? If only they made a plush Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch... oh wait... THEY DO!!
- Virus plushies make an appearance in the Brass Restoration Visual Novel. Kouri is a big fan, and cheerfully sings their theme song: "We hurt people's bodies, eat their lives, and we go on~"
- Speaking of microbial plushies, yes, there are Moyashimon plushies.
- The Philosopher's Guild presents.. Little Thinkers. Who wouldn't want a Nietszche doll?
- Gamestop has now released a plushie of their bunny mascot. It even has a voice chip in it.
- Any animal or popular fictional creature can have a plushie. They don’t have to be soft and fluffy in real life, like a mammal.
- Plushies of marine animals also exist, including octopuses, orcas, and sharks. Just do a google search to see for yourself.
- There are even plushies of reptiles. Go Figure. The same goes for amphibians and bugs.
- There are plushies based on the monsters from Lovecraft. Evil has never looked so cute.
Tabletop RPG[]
- Plüsch, Power & Plunder is a German game about sapient, living plushies who have to keep up the Masquerade from the "tramplers".
- Kult mentions a Child Prodigy which sometimes gets useful advice from his Teddy (given the background of KULT, this is probably not Consulting Mister Puppet, but more Creepy Doll).
Toys[]
- The Matoran exist. There used to be plushie avatars of them on BZPower. Don't know if the plushies still exist though, that was a long time ago.
Video Games[]
- Some Kingdom Hearts characters are available in Super-Deformed plushie form, including the series' resident Eldritch Abomination, the Shadow Heartless. Even Xemnas has his own plushie.
- Mass Effect: Fan-made Garrus plushies!
- After many unofficial plushie companion cubes from Portal (proving the notion of the Companion Cube trope), Valve Software finally released official ones.
- It was likely fan made (though you wouldn't be able to tell), but a plush turret has been seen.
- Also from Valve, Headcrab plushies.
- And, in case you crave a little added realism, hats.
- And BOOOOOOOOOOMER!
- And for Team Fortress 2, Valve presented the sticky bomb plushie.
- In addition, several in-game examples exist: a teddy bear with a hard hat, overalls, and smoked goggles for the Engineer; a plush Medic for the Heavy and Soldier; an enemy-team-colored Spy voodoo doll for the Engineer; and a pair of shoulder angels for the Pyro.
- Scout, Soldier, and Pyro are being made into plushies as we speak. Check out the prototype versions here.
- Little Big Planet is a little bit different about its plushies. See, you play as a Sackboy/girl, who is a living, customizable, and completely adorable plushie. Defictionalization ahoy!
- Raidou Kuzunoha VS King Abaddon comes with a plushie of Raiho, the adorable (and very popular) fourth-wall-breaking Bonus Boss of the first game, as a preorder bonus. Fans are so excited about this plushie that many people have joked that it's "a plushie that comes with a free game" rather than the other way around.
- Plushie Raiho is also limited to the first print of the game. The deluxe packages are numbered, and Atlus won't reveal how many there are (though enthusiastic buyers have confirmed that there are over 40 thousand in circulation). It also won't be sold separately.
- There are plushies of Teddie from Persona 4.
- Are they made from 100% natural Teddie fur?
- Recently, there have been plushies of Izanagi and Jiraiya as well. They're cute! ...in a weird way.
- Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete came with a Ghaleon punching puppet as a preorder bonus.
- Working Designs planned to release a Windows version of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete with a Dragonmaster Alex punching puppet, but the game was cancelled and they were never produced.
- In Final Fantasy X, Lulu attacks with plushies. Most certainly a Shout-Out to the plushies of the characters.
- Auron plushie!
- Aww plush Sephiroth, you're so cute! You're gonna grow up big and strong and handsome!
- Guild Wars fans can now purchase a limited edition Charr plushie in anticipation for Guild Wars 2!
- Li'l Pyramid Head.
- You will kneel before the might of Vana'deil's baby Chocobos!
- Everyone from Samurai Shodown 2 has the ability to turn into immobile small plushie versions of themselves, complete with a keychain.
- In some Pokémon games, you can buy plushies in-game to decorate your character's bedroom/secret base. They have plushies for some of the most unlikely of Pokémon, such as Duskull.
- They actually combined the regular cuteness of plushies with the Pokémon being Super-Deformed. So much Squee.
- As a quick search on Amazon.com can show, Japan keeps all the good ones (usually from Pokémon Center).
- America has received some of these hopelessly cute plushies under the name "Pokédolls".
- They actually combined the regular cuteness of plushies with the Pokémon being Super-Deformed. So much Squee.
- Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness DS came with a plush chicken if you preordered it from Amazon.
- That's a common pre-order gift for the series.
- In-game in The World Ends With You, Mr. Mew is both an infinity plus one plushie and an improbable weapon.
- Some fan of Starcraft made a Reaver plushie.
- There are numerous Yogg-Saron plushies made by fans who took a liking to him. Yogg-Saron does seem to have an odd kind of popularity among World of Warcraft players.
- The Cacodemon from Doom has had two notable plushies made in its honour, namely Hissy and Pixel.
- A worrying trend, and a popular fan-project (likely due to the simple design of the character), among fans of Yume Nikki is to make plushies of Uboa. Nothing quite like cuddling with an eldritch terror.
- Super Mario Bros. plushies. Also Peach, Bowser, Yoshi, Koopas, Shy Guys, Goombas, Boos....Just run a search on Amazon for them.
- What's cuter than Kirby? Kirby Plusies! [1] [2]. Also Meta Knight, King Dedede, Waddle Dee, even Zero Two get treatment as well.
- There are possibly hundreds of Sonic the Hedgehog plushies out there. Most notable are the plushies of characters such as Bean and Bark, who haven't been seen in over a decade, plushies of non-animal characters, like Metal Sonic and Gamma, plushes of non game characters, plush Chao, and life size plushies of Sonic. Disappointingly there isn't an official Defictionalization of the in game plushie of the Tails Doll from Sonic R.
- Many of the ones that haven't been officially made have been done by fans, including the defictionalized Tails Doll.
- There's also a site dedicated to Sonic stuff, including plushies
- There are a vast amount of Touhou Project plushies out there. Here's a few of them.
- There are also Angry Birds plushies as well, of every bird and pig in the game! [3]
- Inverted with Die Anstalt - the Flash game is the more recognizable aspect, but the game was created to go with its corresponding plushies, not vice versa.
Web Comics[]
- Sluggy Freelance has plushies among other merchandise; it helps that Bun-Bun and Kiki already resemble plushies more than they do real animals. A Kiki plushy has even been written into the story.
- Plushies are a Running Gag in Drowtales and its related stories. And yes, they did make plushie versions of two of the characters, and one of the artists owns a "demon plushie" that has appeared a few times.
- In The Order of the Stick, Tsukiko owns a plushie Xykon.
- There are plushies of the Jinxlets from Starslip available. They're too cute to be legal.
- Huge plush Charles Bronson!
- For a limited time, there was a plushy of Joyce from Its Walky.
- Brawl in the Family has the Dededoll, defictionalized after just 2 appearances in the comic. It's that cute.
- Goblins! has a plushy Big Ears, complete with Axe. This has led to some fan speculation as to what a plushy Kore would be like.
- Erfworld has a wide range of dwagon plushies. They're cute, just like the vicious croaking machines depicted in the comic.
- The Fuzzy Five started off with plushies and then became a pretty good webcomic.
Web Original[]
- On Neopets there were plushie versions of the paint brushes. There is even a paint brush that turns neopets into plushies. It is very expensive. Also just about everything and everyone in Neopets, from the Real Life founders, to various kinds of food both in the real world and on the site.
- Potter Puppet Pals
- Little Kuriboh of Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series likes to have a Yami plushie pretend to be Dan Green, and play him as a grown up 10-year-old, including thinking Girls Have Cooties.
- The War of the Abridged Series Creators features loads of plushies for the respective shows.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender Youtube Spoof: Avatar The Last Puppetbender
- Even Zero Punctuation has gotten in on this, with plush versions of the black imps.
- And finally, for all you New Media creators out there who want to get in on the game, CustomPlush.com is here to serve all your squeezable Merch needs! They require a minimum run of 500 units, so this is definitely for creators, not fans.
- You can collect plushies of just about anything in Subeta. Pets, pies, poop (no seriously), potions...
- Alternate History Dot Com once started the Sealion World Tour (still going on in 2010). The members send a plush sealion named Sealion from one member to another, who'll take pictures and post them on the forum. At the moment, Sealion has already visited three continents (North America, Europe, Asia) and about a dozen different countries. And South America is where he is now.
- B Group is currently collecting donations to fund the creation of a talking plush version of the demonic main character of their Reincarnation series.
Western Animation[]
- There have been numerous Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers plushies, but plushie-sized figurines of Monterey Jack and Gadget have only ever been made once. These figurines made by Applause aren't even true plushies with their vinyl heads and paws, and Gadget doesn't contain a square inch of plush at all. But since these figurines have ceased to be manufactured long ago, and since there isn't any alternative, it is her who is the most expensive by far. Chip and Dale as Rescue Rangers can still be acquired as true plushies at every Disney theme park, though.
- In-universe, we see a binome with a Guardian Bob plushie in one of the later seasons of Re Boot.
- Another in-universe example: Heloise on Jimmy Two-Shoes has several Jimmy plushies as part of her Stalker Shrine.
- My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has surprisingly few plushies, but there are many fans capable of making plushies of their own. While they're of course a whole lot more show accurate, and while they're based on several variations of characters ranging from the Mane Six to background ponies and even Lauren Faust's pony avatar herself, they're also handmade one-of-a-kind pieces, and if they're sold, it's for very high prices. One fan is famous for making high-quality plushies of the main characters in their Gala dresses which include embroidered eyes and cutie marks and which sell for four-digit prices.
- Plushies of the main six from Recess were made back in 1999-2000, and were primarily sold at Toys "R" Us and The Disney Store.
Other[]
- Zombie plushies
- The list of most geeky plushies ever.
- Pretty much anything on Toy Vault could qualify but some worth mentioning include monsters, swear bears, Egyptian gods, and nightmares.