Monsterrific!

The Teddy bear is here to stay, but it's not the 'be-all' and 'end-all' of plush anymore. Some of today's hottest soft toys are not realistic, humanized or even based on popular entertainment licenses. Instead, a free-for-all of fantastical shapes turns into a monster's ball.

“Any shape can be a monster,” says Kristin Daniels, co-owner of Kamibashi Asian Art, Leicester, NC, which sells monsters as part of its Koonin Family Pets line. “When we order we just say 'send us 500 monsters.' We never know what we're going to get.”

Where is all this new weird coming from? In part from kiddie characters' old friend, cartoons. But this is not your father's Saturday morning. Horvath and his wife Sun-Min, creators of Pretty Ugly LLC's, Edison, NJ, Uglydolls, “both grew up on the same TV shows from Japan,” he tells Gifts & Decorative Accessories. “Ultraman, Sentai, and Kamen Rider. Neither of us understood who these characters were, and they didn't match anything found on TV or in the toy stores near us. And we couldn't understand Japanese, so our minds would fill in the blanks.”

“While Uglydolls don't really look like anything from those old TV shows,” says Horvath, what he got from those influences is “the idea that something could just be appreciated for what it is without being connected to a popular TV show, and the idea that something others may consider 'ugly' could be seen as something unique and special.” That said, the growing American popularity of Japanese-style cartooning in anime and manga shows there's life in more direct spin-offs, too.

Meanwhile, American animation is following suit, with blockbusters such as Monsters Inc. and Shrek. And yesterday's fright is today's friend: following the trend in adult books, movies and TV, especially the popular vampire genre, these days monsters are more apt to be the hero than the villain, perhaps helping children overcome their fear of the unknown.

Daniels says, “People who buy the monsters here I'm sure are influenced by anime and manga. Sure, artists are inspired by Japanese art, but then they make their own art as well.” Interestingly, the cultural influence goes both ways. Daniels adds, “In Japan the monsters are huge. When we get orders from Japan it is 80, 90 percent monsters.”

As children “age out” of pure play faster, or at least the willingness to call it by that name and do it in public, quirky plush that doubles as pillows and expressive room decor is popular with tweens, teens, even hip adults. Daniels confirms, “Our products basically appeal to all ages.” Horvath adds, “The truth is, Uglydoll is enjoyed by all ages, male and female pretty much equally. Kids make friends with them, professionals buy them as gifts for other adults, pre-teens and 'tweens' grab them up just as fast, teens collect them and wear the smaller clip-ons on their bags, and adults decorate with them ... actually adults make friends with them, too. This is the way it's been since we've started and we're really pleased to see this continue! Our fastest growing demographic is everyone.” This is a welcome development for parents fighting the 'age-compression' trend; too-grownup (and sometimes too sexy) toys for tweens, as well as those following the current craze for decorating their kids rooms in design-driven, and pricey, fashions.

Despite Horvath's egalitarian enthusiasm, “ugly” plush particularly appeals to boys, at least according to “Guys and Dolls: An Ugly Remake,” a recent article in The New York Times. The article speculates that the appeal may be the creatures' own largely masculine gender, unsmiling faces or naughty and adventurous back stories that appeal to boys, and make them acceptably masculine and age-appropriate, where other plush may not be perceived that way.

Part of the point of monsters for adults and kids alike is the message. “Ugly means unique, and being different is great,” is how Horvath puts it. Its clear why parents would embrace a message that fights peer pressure; the neat trick is the way the message speaks directly to kids too, perhaps because monsters aren't preachy and keep the focus on the positive (and peculiar).

As a result of this emphasis on uniqueness, each monster's emotional appeal is specific and different. “We rarely hear Uglydolls being referred to as plush or stuffed animals from consumers. We often hear about the characters,” says Horvath, adding, “We'll always hear 'my favorite is Babo' rather than 'I like the blue one.' And more than that, we'll hear people tell us which one they are most like, or they'll say 'my uncle is just like Jeero.' The characters themselves have become important to people.” Daniels agrees, saying of her pet monsters that an important part of their appeal is, “They each have a birthday and a motto,” such as 'I'll watch your back from under the mattress' or 'Being weird is more fun,' as well as the fact that each is made one-of-a-kind by a different combination of shapes, fabrics, words and symbols. And Lorene C. Shiraiwa, a spokesman for North American Bear, says its monsters each have a different funny trait or characteristic on the hangtag, along with the name and age of the child designer.

Yet ironically for characters brimming with personality, part of the appeal is that, compared with entertainment tie-ins, there is also an air of mystery. Creatures with cryptic names and ambiguous species come only with a few lines of text on a hangtag to identify them, leaving plenty of blanks for the consumer to fill in from their own imagination.

While monsters have particular appeal for “museum stores and contemporary and upbeat stores that have a more modern taste,” says Shiraiwa, middle-of-the-road retailers do well with them, too. “[The line] is being ordered across the board,” she says, and Horvath agrees, citing Uglydolls' success everywhere from book stores and comic shops to arty concept shops like Los Angeles' Giant Robot, where Uglydolls have graced the front window since 2002.

Michelle Borok, manager of Giant Robot, explains the display's hands-on appeal. “We have a corner window by the front door that we use as an Uglydoll holding pen. The Uglies are stacked — sometimes to the ceiling, creating a giant Uglydoll mountain. Their faces are up against the window, calling in passersby, and they fill the window with color and plush-y love. Customers dive into the mountain of plush and find the Ugly they want to take home with them. If it's buried deep within the core of the Ugly pile, then we all get to dig in.”

“The key seems to be keeping them away from the mixed plush pile and giving them their own space,” says Horvath. Another key is playing up the uniqueness of each line (as well as each character). Shiraiwa suggests “it is important that the retailer at the point of sale talks about the charitable aspects,” of North American Bear's monsters' contributions to Global Action for Children, as well as the fact that they're designed by kids, while Daniels talks about the handmade and Fair Trade aspects of her monsters. It pays to share what makes a company's back-story heartwarming: consumers looking for unique personality in their plush appreciate finding it in how it's made, as well as how it's marketed.