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Misused: Everythings Better With Plushies

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    Original post 
Everythings Better With Plushies is, according to the main description, about plushies existing as part of any product's merchandise. Already on the main page I noticed a lot of misuse of the trope, so I ran immediately to do a wick check and it turned out that:

  • 19/50 examples reflect the above mentioned description
  • 15/50 examples are about the in-universe existence of plush toys of the characters
  • 6/50 examples talk about characters who love plush toys and own many of them
  • 10/50 examples are stuff like ZCE, characters who are plush toys or just "plushies exist"

The main idea for me would be to make this trope about in-universe characters obsessed with plush toys and make a separate Trivia trope for plushies existing as The Merch.

Wick check:

Wick check for Everythings Better With Plushies.

Intended meaning: "Plushies were made as part of the merchandise for this product".

Total wicks: 50/50


    open/close all folders 

    Correct use (19/50) 
  • Animal Jam: Players can either win plush at claw machines or buy them at the Summer Carnivalnote , and then they can store plush in their den. Plush also exists as Real Life merchandise.
  • Trivia.Boohbah (under The Merch): Several Boohbah licensed toys, including plushies of the Boohbahs, exist.
  • Cookie Run: Several Cookies, mostly the earlier Cookies, have plushies available for purchase. Unfortunately, after the Cookie Run Mall ended service in 2017, only a few of those plushies are for sale in selected Korean online stores, such as this one.
  • Creatures: The limited edition of Creatures 2 came with real-world norn plushies, and players also came up with their own patterns. A prototype grendel doll was developed but never released.
  • Die Anstalt: The game was made to promote a real line of plush toys.
  • Granny: You can get your own Granny plush! Have a trailer promoting it!
  • Trivia.In The Night Garden (under The Merch): Several licensed toys were made for this show, including plush toys of the characters and playsets of the Ninky-Nonk and the Pinky-Ponk.
  • Left 4 Dead (under Lighter and Fluffier): Alexandria Neonakis' adorable cartoony designs for the Special Infected, which appear on the licensed Christmas cards, previous Valve Store site headers, and even spawned a series of plushies that make the various Infected's signature noises when squeezed. So far, they've released Boomer, Hunter, and Tank, although a prototype of a Jockey hat is floating around online somewhere. The only problem here is that Examples Are Not Recent
  • Left 4 Dead 2: Of the Tank, Hunter, and Boomer! Despite their hideous appearances in-game they make adorable plushies.
  • M78 Love and Peace: Years after the short's production, plushies based on the anime's art style were released as official merchandise.
  • Mighty No. 9: For those that backed at least the $175 USD tier, a large Mega-Xel plushie was included with the other eligible rewards.
  • Monster High: A few waves of them in G1, including the original ghouls, their pets, and other characters. Hoodude's doll also counts, as he's made in plush to reflect his voodoo-doll nature, even though they could have made him in the typical style.
  • Ni no Kuni (in the main description): The most notable feature of Dominion of the Dark Djinn was that the Wizard's Companion was an actual hardbound 392-page book that shipped with the game and was required to progress through the game. The localization and printing cost of the book is widely blamed for the lack of an international release of that version of the game. When White Witch was created, the book was included in digital format. However, a limited "Wizard's Edition" release of the title did include the book as part of a luxury collection, as well as a stuffed doll of Drippy.
  • 100% Orange Juice!: There are plushies of Suguri, Marie Poppo, Hime, QP, Sora, and Star Breaker, complete with their own cards and special accessory, all thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign by Fruitbat Factory and Orange_Juice in collaboration with the US-based Symbiote Studios. A second wave, consisting of Alte, Aru, Tomomo, Saki, Ceoreparque, and Marc, complete with their own cards and accessories, has since been made.
  • Origin Realms (under Mascot): It isn't difficult to associate 0R-Bit with Origin Realms. Besides using the server's acronyms, the character was made specifically for the server's tutorial, and its presence is seen in cosmetics, a furniture item and the in-game messages for players making a purchase from the online store. In fact, 0R-Bit is the first instance of the server having a real-life plushie.
  • Plants vs. Zombies: A set of plushies with voice chips in them have been released. They include the normal mook zombie, Squash, Peashooter, and Sunflower.
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The characters have had numerous real-life plush toys made of them.
  • Poptropica: There are real-life Poptropica plushies of various NPCs out there if you want to buy them.
  • Tamagotchi: The Tamagotchis have had a variety of plushes made out of them. Considering the characters are purposefully made to be cute and cuddly, this makes sense.

    Refers to unofficial/fanmade plushies (0/50) 

    Plushies of the characters exist in-universe (15/50) 

    A character likes plush toys (6/50) 
  • Alice Mare: Chelsy fills her room with teddy bears.
  • Apex Legends: Nessie plushes reprise their Titanfall 2 role as an Easter Egg, appearing in certain out-of-the-way spots for players who know where to look for them. Here, they have a Justified reason for their placement too: Wattson left them lying around King's Canyon as a child, and carries at least one around with her most of the time.
  • Associated Student Bodies: Thomas, the chubby fox, is shown to have a love of plushies in several of the pornfolios.
  • Broken Age: Mom certainly thinks so; everything on the ship is a cute doll, or a cute living doll. Shay disagrees.
  • éX-Driver: Nina's workspace (and later revealed in Danger Zone, her apartment) has dozens of plushies. This is marked as a double trope with Girls Love Stuffed Animals
  • Life and Death: Why else would a valkyrie buy one.

    ZCE, "Plushies exist" and other misuses (10/50) 
  • DragonFable: The Plushie Cabinet, and also an entire War with Plushies as enemies during Frostval 2010.
  • Escape the Night: Blueberry (dog), Blanche (horse)…
    • In Episode 1, Jc was seen holding an elephant plushie in a shot if one pays attention.
    • Some of the townspeople have plushies too. Such as a tiger.
  • Friendship is Witchcraft: One of Rainbow Dash's lyrics in The Convention song.
    "Meet fanboys by the dozens, they'll shower me with plushies!"
  • A Goofy Movie (under The Cameo): Bambi and Mufasa appear as stuffed animals at Goofy's workplace.
  • JimmyHere: Jimmy has several, notable ones are Jake the Dog and Gunther.
  • Lost Ruins (under Cursed Item): Elanor the princess ghost's Best Friend and Cursed Scythe, the latter of which is the best weapon in the game (assuming you don't miss your swings).
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus (under Cultural Translation): A few sketches were redone by the German comedy duo of Harald Juhnke and Eddi Arent. The one sketch about the difficult book shop customernote  gets a justification tacked on: Because the salesman's mother owns the shop and has threatened him that she'll disinherit him and give the shop to his brother if he doesn't manage to sell at least one book — that's the explanation why he puts up with the customer neither being able to pay for the book nor to read it. And the famous "Dead Parrot" sketch becomes... brace yourself... upped to eleven (this was probably the intention) with the dead parrot replaced by a plush parrot. And at the end, when the customer points out that the "parrot" he bought is "just a toy", the salesman states philosophically "Aren't we all but God's toys, somehow?", turning around and revealing that he's a wind-up android.
  • The Noddy Shop: Bonita Flamingo is a stuffed carnival toy.
  • Potter Puppet Pals: Empty ZCE
  • Xolga and Mr. Toko (under Imaginary Friend): What Sam actually is. He is, in reality, just a doll Mr. Toko/Tom had in the hospital. However, thanks to the love Tom had for him, he actually had a soul and a heart like that of human. He even stopped the time for 9 whole years just to keep Tom alive when he was slowly dying of an illness, before Issac cured him. Sam himself "died" (in other words, got broken) and stayed in the abandoned hospital since forever before Tom finally comes back and says one last goodbye... Nice fully spoilered entry

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 1st 2023 at 1:25:52 PM

PhantomDusclops92 Wick checker for hire from Italy (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Plastic Love
Wick checker for hire
#1: Dec 17th 2022 at 12:31:48 PM

To-do list:

    Original post 
Everythings Better With Plushies is, according to the main description, about plushies existing as part of any product's merchandise. Already on the main page I noticed a lot of misuse of the trope, so I ran immediately to do a wick check and it turned out that:

  • 19/50 examples reflect the above mentioned description
  • 15/50 examples are about the in-universe existence of plush toys of the characters
  • 6/50 examples talk about characters who love plush toys and own many of them
  • 10/50 examples are stuff like ZCE, characters who are plush toys or just "plushies exist"

The main idea for me would be to make this trope about in-universe characters obsessed with plush toys and make a separate Trivia trope for plushies existing as The Merch.

Wick check:

Wick check for Everythings Better With Plushies.

Intended meaning: "Plushies were made as part of the merchandise for this product".

Total wicks: 50/50


    open/close all folders 

    Correct use (19/50) 
  • Animal Jam: Players can either win plush at claw machines or buy them at the Summer Carnivalnote , and then they can store plush in their den. Plush also exists as Real Life merchandise.
  • Trivia.Boohbah (under The Merch): Several Boohbah licensed toys, including plushies of the Boohbahs, exist.
  • Cookie Run: Several Cookies, mostly the earlier Cookies, have plushies available for purchase. Unfortunately, after the Cookie Run Mall ended service in 2017, only a few of those plushies are for sale in selected Korean online stores, such as this one.
  • Creatures: The limited edition of Creatures 2 came with real-world norn plushies, and players also came up with their own patterns. A prototype grendel doll was developed but never released.
  • Die Anstalt: The game was made to promote a real line of plush toys.
  • Granny: You can get your own Granny plush! Have a trailer promoting it!
  • Trivia.In The Night Garden (under The Merch): Several licensed toys were made for this show, including plush toys of the characters and playsets of the Ninky-Nonk and the Pinky-Ponk.
  • Left 4 Dead (under Lighter and Fluffier): Alexandria Neonakis' adorable cartoony designs for the Special Infected, which appear on the licensed Christmas cards, previous Valve Store site headers, and even spawned a series of plushies that make the various Infected's signature noises when squeezed. So far, they've released Boomer, Hunter, and Tank, although a prototype of a Jockey hat is floating around online somewhere. The only problem here is that Examples Are Not Recent
  • Left 4 Dead 2: Of the Tank, Hunter, and Boomer! Despite their hideous appearances in-game they make adorable plushies.
  • M78 Love and Peace: Years after the short's production, plushies based on the anime's art style were released as official merchandise.
  • Mighty No. 9: For those that backed at least the $175 USD tier, a large Mega-Xel plushie was included with the other eligible rewards.
  • Monster High: A few waves of them in G1, including the original ghouls, their pets, and other characters. Hoodude's doll also counts, as he's made in plush to reflect his voodoo-doll nature, even though they could have made him in the typical style.
  • Ni no Kuni (in the main description): The most notable feature of Dominion of the Dark Djinn was that the Wizard's Companion was an actual hardbound 392-page book that shipped with the game and was required to progress through the game. The localization and printing cost of the book is widely blamed for the lack of an international release of that version of the game. When White Witch was created, the book was included in digital format. However, a limited "Wizard's Edition" release of the title did include the book as part of a luxury collection, as well as a stuffed doll of Drippy.
  • 100% Orange Juice!: There are plushies of Suguri, Marie Poppo, Hime, QP, Sora, and Star Breaker, complete with their own cards and special accessory, all thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign by Fruitbat Factory and Orange_Juice in collaboration with the US-based Symbiote Studios. A second wave, consisting of Alte, Aru, Tomomo, Saki, Ceoreparque, and Marc, complete with their own cards and accessories, has since been made.
  • Origin Realms (under Mascot): It isn't difficult to associate 0R-Bit with Origin Realms. Besides using the server's acronyms, the character was made specifically for the server's tutorial, and its presence is seen in cosmetics, a furniture item and the in-game messages for players making a purchase from the online store. In fact, 0R-Bit is the first instance of the server having a real-life plushie.
  • Plants vs. Zombies: A set of plushies with voice chips in them have been released. They include the normal mook zombie, Squash, Peashooter, and Sunflower.
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The characters have had numerous real-life plush toys made of them.
  • Poptropica: There are real-life Poptropica plushies of various NPCs out there if you want to buy them.
  • Tamagotchi: The Tamagotchis have had a variety of plushes made out of them. Considering the characters are purposefully made to be cute and cuddly, this makes sense.

    Refers to unofficial/fanmade plushies (0/50) 

    Plushies of the characters exist in-universe (15/50) 

    A character likes plush toys (6/50) 
  • Alice Mare: Chelsy fills her room with teddy bears.
  • Apex Legends: Nessie plushes reprise their Titanfall 2 role as an Easter Egg, appearing in certain out-of-the-way spots for players who know where to look for them. Here, they have a Justified reason for their placement too: Wattson left them lying around King's Canyon as a child, and carries at least one around with her most of the time.
  • Associated Student Bodies: Thomas, the chubby fox, is shown to have a love of plushies in several of the pornfolios.
  • Broken Age: Mom certainly thinks so; everything on the ship is a cute doll, or a cute living doll. Shay disagrees.
  • éX-Driver: Nina's workspace (and later revealed in Danger Zone, her apartment) has dozens of plushies. This is marked as a double trope with Girls Love Stuffed Animals
  • Life and Death: Why else would a valkyrie buy one.

    ZCE, "Plushies exist" and other misuses (10/50) 
  • DragonFable: The Plushie Cabinet, and also an entire War with Plushies as enemies during Frostval 2010.
  • Escape the Night: Blueberry (dog), Blanche (horse)…
    • In Episode 1, Jc was seen holding an elephant plushie in a shot if one pays attention.
    • Some of the townspeople have plushies too. Such as a tiger.
  • Friendship is Witchcraft: One of Rainbow Dash's lyrics in The Convention song.
    "Meet fanboys by the dozens, they'll shower me with plushies!"
  • A Goofy Movie (under The Cameo): Bambi and Mufasa appear as stuffed animals at Goofy's workplace.
  • JimmyHere: Jimmy has several, notable ones are Jake the Dog and Gunther.
  • Lost Ruins (under Cursed Item): Elanor the princess ghost's Best Friend and Cursed Scythe, the latter of which is the best weapon in the game (assuming you don't miss your swings).
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus (under Cultural Translation): A few sketches were redone by the German comedy duo of Harald Juhnke and Eddi Arent. The one sketch about the difficult book shop customernote  gets a justification tacked on: Because the salesman's mother owns the shop and has threatened him that she'll disinherit him and give the shop to his brother if he doesn't manage to sell at least one book — that's the explanation why he puts up with the customer neither being able to pay for the book nor to read it. And the famous "Dead Parrot" sketch becomes... brace yourself... upped to eleven (this was probably the intention) with the dead parrot replaced by a plush parrot. And at the end, when the customer points out that the "parrot" he bought is "just a toy", the salesman states philosophically "Aren't we all but God's toys, somehow?", turning around and revealing that he's a wind-up android.
  • The Noddy Shop: Bonita Flamingo is a stuffed carnival toy.
  • Potter Puppet Pals: Empty ZCE
  • Xolga and Mr. Toko (under Imaginary Friend): What Sam actually is. He is, in reality, just a doll Mr. Toko/Tom had in the hospital. However, thanks to the love Tom had for him, he actually had a soul and a heart like that of human. He even stopped the time for 9 whole years just to keep Tom alive when he was slowly dying of an illness, before Issac cured him. Sam himself "died" (in other words, got broken) and stayed in the abandoned hospital since forever before Tom finally comes back and says one last goodbye... Nice fully spoilered entry

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 1st 2023 at 1:25:52 PM

The best character is always the one-shot disguise.
MacronNotes (she/her) (Captain) Relationship Status: Less than three
Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#3: Dec 17th 2022 at 1:13:51 PM

  • Move Trivia examples to Plushie Merch (which is renaming and making it Trivia). I don't really want to merge it with The Merch when it has so many subtropes.
  • I can entertain Plushie Copy for the mentioned In Univserse variant.
  • I can entertain a trope about a character always having a specific toy in hand or collect them.

e: Took a while get what the second proposal refers to.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 17th 2022 at 12:38:20 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Nen_desharu Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire from Greater Smash Bros. Universe or Toronto Since: Aug, 2020 Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
#4: Dec 17th 2022 at 1:37:01 PM

Split the trope into one about in-universe plushies and another being real-life plushies as merch with Everythings Better With Plushies be made into disambig.

Kirby is awesome.
RandomTroper123 She / Her from I'll let you guess... (Not-So-Newbie) Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
She / Her
#5: Dec 17th 2022 at 1:49:27 PM

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Mar 3rd 2023 at 8:32:37 AM

amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#6: Dec 17th 2022 at 2:14:55 PM

  • agree with moving the examples of brands having plushie merch over to The Merch
  • agree with splitting out a trope about in-universe meta references to the work by pointing out whenever plushies of characters in the work show up. That said, I think there should probably be a caveat that this doesn't include works in which the characters are in-universe famous enough to have plushies of themselves sold as that isn't meta at all.
  • While I do think a trope about collecting things should be split out, it need not be plushie specific. We currently don't have a trope for "character has a hobby that involves amassing a huge collection of a particular item" or "character is an extreme fan of something and collects a lot of things related to it" (though I suspect The Collector is often misused in this way) and that base idea can be applie to a lot: bottle caps, state coins, trading cards, etc.

ETA: On top of all of that, disambig the page / cut. Either is fine with me.

Edited by amathieu13 on Dec 17th 2022 at 5:21:31 AM

Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#7: Dec 17th 2022 at 2:18:37 PM

For the third I've considered children that have a specific toy (teddy) who get upset without one.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#8: Dec 17th 2022 at 2:20:43 PM

[up]You mean a trope about children (or adults who act like children) asking for a specific thing and having a tantrum when that specific thing exactly isn't brought to them?

Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#9: Dec 17th 2022 at 2:23:31 PM

Alongside that. Child and child-like characters often have a childish Signature Item in their hands pretty much all their on-screen time.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#10: Dec 17th 2022 at 3:30:07 PM

[up]I think that would be covered by Toy-Based Characterization, Security Blanket, or this about to launch trope called Sentimental Homemade Toy, which is a subtrope of Toy-Based Characterization (depending obviously if it's homemade).

Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#11: Dec 17th 2022 at 3:34:17 PM

Thought it didn't exist. Toy-Based Characterization can cover "characters who love plush toys and own many of them" then.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 17th 2022 at 2:34:32 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#12: Dec 17th 2022 at 3:36:34 PM

I agree with the amathieu regarding what to do with examples (this post and this post).

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Nen_desharu Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire from Greater Smash Bros. Universe or Toronto Since: Aug, 2020 Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
Berrenta How sweet it is from Texas Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
How sweet it is
#14: Dec 17th 2022 at 6:48:48 PM

Looking at all the different tropes we named here, maybe we should disambiguate.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#15: Dec 17th 2022 at 8:44:37 PM

Honestly, yeah, I think I'm leaning toward disambiguating due to how many toy-related tropes have come up.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
PhantomDusclops92 Wick checker for hire from Italy (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Plastic Love
Wick checker for hire
#16: Dec 18th 2022 at 2:11:01 PM

I'm OK for the disambiguation.

The best character is always the one-shot disguise.
themayorofsimpleton Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him from Elsewhere (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: Abstaining
Cutegirl920fire CG for short from NYC apparently (Rule of Three) Relationship Status: Paris holds the key to my heart
CG for short
#18: Dec 18th 2022 at 2:57:23 PM

[tup] Disambig

Victor of HGS S320 | "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember."
Someoneman Since: Nov, 2011
#19: Dec 18th 2022 at 7:49:50 PM

Plushie Merch is The Same, but More Specific to The Merch, so I don't understand what's wrong with moving examples there.

Ayumi-chan low-poly Shinri from Calvard (Apprentice) Relationship Status: Serial head-patter
low-poly Shinri
#20: Dec 18th 2022 at 7:54:20 PM

[tup] disambig

She/Her | Currently cleaning N/A
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#21: Dec 18th 2022 at 8:54:33 PM

I said it at the end of my initial post but to reiterate [tup]disambig (or cut).

All new trope spin-off ideas can be pursued at the TLP or yarded at any troper's discretion

RandomTroper123 She / Her from I'll let you guess... (Not-So-Newbie) Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
She / Her
#22: Dec 18th 2022 at 9:05:27 PM

On second thought, [tup]to disambiguating.

Yindee Just stoic wisdom. from New England Since: Jul, 2016
FernandoLemon Nobody Here from Argentina (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: In season
GastonRabbit MOD Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#25: Dec 19th 2022 at 10:39:59 PM

I made a crowner. Merging with/redirecting to The Merch and disambiguating are mutually exclusive with both each other and the split options, but as I said in the crowner, these options do not preclude taking the splits to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard if the trope is redirected/merged or disambiguated.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

19th Dec '22 10:29:21 PM

Crown Description:

Everythings Better With Plushies is, according to the main description, about plushies existing as part of any product's merchandise. However, it's frequently misused. What should be done with it?

Total posts: 31
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