If you, like me, are a child, you’ll regularly refresh the new releases on the official Pokémon store to see what madcap paraphernalia its selling today. With almost daily drops, these additions can be anything from a statue of Ditto eating Pewter Crunchies, to an entire range of wildly overpriced Pikachu-themed cookware. To name just two from last week. But today sees the appearance of something else: the “Sweet Support Plush,” and they might be the sweetest things my eyes have ever seen.
Pokémon plushes fall into all sorts of categories, from the adorable Sitting Cuties to the enormous (and enormously expensive) “life size” behemoths. But this latest range, launched now in the UK and and the U.S., is called Sweet Support and comprises a Pokémon and its baby type, tethered together, the larger with its arms spread to cuddle the younger. They also appear to be made of the fluffiest fluff ever fluffed.
For anyone worried that this is some sort of undeclared sponsored post, let me dissuade such thoughts by observing that they’re far too expensive. The same size as a Sitting Cutie, they somehow cost more than twice as much, and these have immediately gone onto my “beg for near a birthday” list.
There are just four of them at present: Igglybuff and Jigglypuff, Azurill and Marill, Bonsley and Sudowoodo, and Pichu and Pikachu. Of them, I’m surprised to find the Pikachu is the loveliest—a Pokémon I can usually take or leave—simply because of the utter gorgeousness of their faces. Pikachu looks ready to offer endless unconditional love to a little Pichu who looks worried, on the verge of tears. It makes me think of the unnecessarily brilliant Katy Perry video.
Oh god, tell me I’m not about to spend £25 of His Majesty’s finest foreign money on this tiny cuddly of a pocket monster to which I feel indifference? Someone, don’t let me.
The tether between the two is placed very peculiarly like an umbilical cord, raising vast numbers of questions about baby Pokémon that I don’t feel ready to face on a Monday morning. These things are supposed to be born in eggs, but then also the adult versions seem to be able to be egg-birthed as well as the baby versions, and yet one can evolve into the other, and…no, this has to stop.
Presumably there will be a bunch more of these released in time, given how many baby-types there are. God forbid there ever be a cursed Mime Jr. and Mr. Mime, but Happiny/Chansey and Munchlax/Snorlax seem like inevitabilities. And then for some reason there will never be a Mantyke/Mantine one, because Pokémon hates Mantine—the greatest of all the Pokémon—and goes out of its way to never include the perfect little creature in anything.
