The Get List: Toreba: Pokemon Gengar Kutsurogi Time Plush

In which I like my Pokemon ghostly and my Gengar carpety.

I had a genuinely depressing run on Toreba for a month or two recently; things that seemed like sure wins never turned out to be, and I wasn’t super thrilled with a perceived difficulty spike in machines for high demand plush. (I’m not doing that old “the claw’s been NeRfEd” whining thing, or at least I don’t think I am; I’m just referring to having way more plush set up so you have to grab a box or small item rather than the plush itself, and limiting the types of prizes and machines you can use free tickets on.)

And while I’m a little sad that during this time I wasn’t able to win this nearly-a-foot-tall big boi after spending an amount of money trying that can only be explained via political uncertainty and mental fragility (maybe someone out there won one, and doesn’t want it…? I’m just a comment away, you know.) I did have some pretty good luck. By chance I ran across what seems to be that Gengar above’s slightly younger brother — from this April 2020 release — and then I caught him with only a couple of tries!

Anyway, this plush is about as perfect as it gets, and I think it would honestly be easy to just confuse this one with the larger-sized equivalent. They’re both part of the Kutsurogi Time (Sleepy Time) collection; it’s just that the one I managed to win is described as でっかい (dekkai — I think we’ve translated this as huuuge before, like here for example), whereas the one I’d originally had my eye on is めちゃでか (mecha deka), which we translated as super huge here and with Mew here. What’s the difference between huuuge and super huge with Gengar, you ask? About three inches, I guess, and not a whole lot more.

Gengar has also got this amazing texture that I’ve praised here and there on other Kutsurogi Time plush, and there’s no other way to describe it other than like a carpet — so, er, carpety — in the very best way possible. You know how some carpets wear in such a way that they’re soft and familiar as opposed to, you know, kind of threadbare and unsatisfying? That’s the texture I mean. It sort of reminds me, of all things, of Kermit the Frog. I remember reading somewhere that Kermit was made from an old coat formerly owned by Jim Henson’s mom, and I think that’s where I get it — this Gengar is soft in the exact same way as an old woolen coat. He’s pretty much the ultimate cuddling champion, and I can’t say enough positive things about him,

Whether you end up getting the bigger one or the smaller one, I don’t think there’s a Gengar fan in the world that wouldn’t be delighted by this plush. It couldn’t be better in terms of design and quality, and the thought of Gengar smiling in his sleep so gleefully is just so perfectly in-character that it kills me. And luckily the end of my losing streak with Toreba didn’t seem to be a fluke; I’ve got a few more Pokemon plush I need to catch up on that have already arrived, and more are coming soon!