In which I am pretty sure I couldn’t say that title three times fast, but I sure can snuggle this little friend!
I just made my first purchase from the US Pokemon Center, and I am ridiculously pleased by the whole thing. They have free domestic shipping for orders over twenty dollars and my stuff arrived two days after shipment (five after the order was made). Honestly, it’s nice not to have shipping almost double the price sometimes!
And it was a relief, to be honest, that everything looked so good, because I often find it difficult to navigate merchandise for series marketed to both people in Japan and America. The American toys and figures simply look worse most of the time — more mold artifacts, worse paint, more uncanny valley sculpts, etc.
I had originally wanted to get the Gengar House from this year’s Halloween Pokemon collection, but it sold out very quickly and I thought it was a little overpriced. But when I saw pictures of an opened figure, it wasn’t just overpriced — the quality was appalling. For example, there is a Gengar face bowl on the doorstep (switch to the second picture in the link above to see it better, if you’d like) with rocks (? Something gray…) in it. It looks very nice in the picture, but on the real one the purple paint was applied so sloppily to the bowl it resulted in a big purple stripe down the middle of the gray. And that was far from the only issue.
I would love to link you to those pictures, but unfortunately I think the response on the subreddit where it was posted was so shocked at how low the quality was that the post got deleted. I feel bad for the poster: there’s nothing fun about posting about something you got only to have people crap all over it. But honestly, I see why people were surprised. It wasn’t even so much “American toy paint quality” as more like the type of paint quality you see on cheap decorations from places like, say, Hobby Lobby. It just wasn’t really what i would expect from Pokemon.
Luckily though, I ended up really pleased with the plushie I bought instead. Here we have Morpeko, an electric type pokemon rivaling even Pikachu in cuteness. I normally prefer his harapeko (hungry, but said in a kind of cute/childish way) form. But I am just too weak to Gengar, and that apparently extends to things dressed as Gengar too.
What really convinced me to buy this plush was the quality of the Gengar costume itself — and I just couldn’t resist that plaid lining. And when the plush showed up, it was even better than I expected. The outfit is made of fabric with just the right weight and slight stiffness to make it keep its shape and really pull off the look.
Measuring a little more than 9 inches high and still selling on the US Pokemon Center site for about $22, I can’t imagine how any fan of Morpeko, Gengar, or just plain Pokemon Halloween cuteness could resist this dear little thing.
Now to ask myself if I want to pick up the Wanpachi/Yamper one too….oh dear.
hello somebunny 