![]() “While we don’t say in our brand statement that we are a mental health pillow, we embrace how they help people.” “Squishmallows are fun to have around the house, you can collect them, they’re fun to sleep with, lay on, and share,” said Runken of the toys, which range in size from 18cm to 50cm, with the largest ones selling for £50 to £60. The toys are popular with children and adults who relate to them in different ways, he said. Gerhard Runken, the senior vice-president of brand and marketing at Jazwares, which owns Squishmallows, said the low-priced toys struck a chord during the Covid era when people were spending more time at home and needed a “little hug or something soft to play with”. For example Cam the Cat, one the US brand’s first characters, likes skateboarding, the beach and cat naps. Launched in 2017, there are now 3,000 Squishmallow designs, each with a unique name and biography, a facet that stokes their appeal for collectors who seek out characters they relate to. Pull those things together and add the power of social media, and Squishmallows became a viral sensation.” “People are also collecting more than ever, we see that in our data with things like Pokémon and Panini stickers. ![]() “It is a bit of ‘cuddles’,” she said of the sensory appeal of the supersoft, cushionlike toys. Tutt said Squishmallows united several big consumer trends including wellness and collecting. This was aided by famous devotees such as Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga and the US social media star Charli D’Amelio posting about the toys to their huge numbers of followers. They rose to prominence on social media as fans – the toys are particularly popular with teenage girls – shared their collections online, resulting in more than 9bn video views on TikTok alone. They’re cuddled up at home with a pink axolotl named Archie.Squishmallows at a DreamToys event in Spitalfields, London. Unfortunately, the human claw machine will not be present.Īt a time when former VidCon king David Dobrik - who was nowhere to be seen this year - faces a $10 million lawsuit brought by collaborator Jeff Wittek for a near-fatal excavator accident, this (lucrative) internet minority isn’t hustling to pull Vlog Squad pranks or start an influencer collective. This won’t be the company’s only event this year: Squishmallows will be at San Diego Comic-Con next month with a new game and rare toys for sale. Bret Ingraham, director of PR at Jazwares, the parent company of Squishmallows, confirmed that more than 10,000 Squish were given away to fans at VidCon - a total that could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the resale market. ![]() While some creators had hundreds of fans waiting to see them - MrBeast’s panel, “YouTube’s Algorithm, Explained,” was packed and turned away more than 200 people - no one matched the hype at the claw. “I know creators like Logan Paul and Tana Mongeau have created chaos in the past at VidCon, but I can’t think of any brand-run exhibit that had that kind of impact,” Weekman said. This is a creators’ event after all!īuzzFeed News reporter Kelsey Weekman, who attended VidCon, said she was blown away by the popularity of the Squishmallows booth. While most of the crowd seemed like organic traffic and genuine fans of the plush product, a few people were paid to participate. Some even took home a Hectico the Cobra Snake, which holds an estimated value of $125 on the Squishmarket. (Yes, the same StockX where your high-school friends buy their Yeezys.) Longtime Squish fans like Kalei Glozier, a 25-year-old who came from Michigan and has a collection of more than 500 Squish, were impressed by the selection at the booth. Lucky collectors hit the Squish jackpot by finding rare items like Jack the Cat, which is sold on StockX for $700. ![]() Collectors, content creators, kids with their parents, and adults with friends they’d met in the Squish community all shared the same amount of excitement when it was their turn at the claw. At one of more than 100 attractions across four days at VidCon, fans waited for more than four hours to participate in a “human claw machine,” where they had 20 seconds to grab all the Squishmallows they could - including some rare and unreleased toys.
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