Have a Holly Jolly… Munchlax?!

Okay, so I just could NOT resist myself (and apparently… neither could he!) and after two months of deliberation…

Guess who fought through the overseas holiday shipping rush and caught the first plane ride home to me and arrived via regular airmail in ONE WEEK flat?

THIS pointy-eared, pointy-toothed, teal-colored, food-loving Munchlax, that’s who!

Soft, smooth-furred, squashy but firm, and sitting over 60cm tall, what’s NOT to love about this plush Munchlax?

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PRODUCT – 5+/5
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AT FIRST GLANCE:

When I said that the plush Munchlax is soft, smooth-furred, squashy but firm, and sits over 60cm tall, I was not joking in any way, shape, or form.

Examining the plushie from all sides shows that the Munchlax is not only well-stuffed but stuffed mostly evenly as well.

If you look especially at the ears, you will notice the complementary symmetry between them and this sense of symmetry is repeated throughout the rest of the plushie’s structure which makes the plushie very nice to look at and gives the plushie a sense of quality.

Added to that sense of quality is the simple fact that the plushie Munchlax actually LOOKS like a Munchlax. From its carefully embroidered-on eyes and paw pads to its two little teeth and two pointy ears and the extra layer of fur covering his lower body, this plush Munchlax has few competitors when it comes to both quality and adherence to canon in terms of its appearance.

Have a look!

What a match, yeah?

MATERIAL WORLD:

Though the pictures don’t do any justice, the outer material – a very short-haired fur-like + flannel-like blend – used for the plushie is of very high quality which results in the plushie having a bit of a lustrous shine and being super smooth and super soft to the touch.

Unlike plushies crafted with longer-haired fur material, this Munchlax plushie is less likely to shed, is less prone to collecting dust, and is – hopefully you will never have to do this – easier to clean.

Smoother and silkier to touch and easier to care for – what’s not to love?

Moving on to the details, the Munchlax plushie has no hard parts as most stuffed toys typically do for eyes, nose, and/or a mouth. Instead, the felt-like eyes have the pupils embroidered on and the eyes are sewn on like patches are and so are the brown pads of his feet. The claws of his paws are crafted of a rougher felt-like material and the end result is a stuffed plush Munchlax who is squashable everywhere without a single hard piece of crafting hardware anywhere.

TAG TIME:

To be honest, I had been shopping around for a plush Munchlax for a long while before I ended up selecting the one I did. I wasn’t a fan of how some of them looked and I definitely wasn’t a fan of some of the prices, either. As the plushie would be for my own personal enjoyment and my own personal enjoyment only, having a branding tag wasn’t too terribly important to me.

That being said, when I purchased this plush Munchlax, I purchased it with the notion that it came with no hang tags (hanging tags) or tush tags (little branding and care slip that is usually attached to the rear end of the plush) as the product pictures didn’t show any tags whatsoever despite the plushie being labeled as being manufactured by Banpresto.

Imagine my surprise, then, to see this:

Tags!

A folded, glossy, cardstock-printed hang tag from Banpresto and a Banpresto tush tag indicating the year it was manufactured and from what series!

Opening up the hang tag reveals that the hang tag is tri-folded and that on the inside of the hang tag is space to register yourself as the Munchlax’s ‘Trainer’ (I’m sure it’s ‘owner’, but people don’t ‘own’ Pokemon, yeah?).

In addition, there is an inscription on the inside of the tag that reads: For Use as Prize in Japan Only.

For those of you who are familiar with that phrase, you probably know what those words mean. To those of you who aren’t, it means that this plushie was originally manufactured as a prize for use in an official UFO Catcher Doll machine which is a claw machine game where you slot in money and maneuver a claw around to try and grab a hold of an item (in this case, UFO Catcher dolls!) in the machine.

More a skill-based game combined with a bit of gambling, the prize inside the machine ‘costs’ as much as the money you spent in attempting to get the prize and that is if you managed to snag the prize in the first place.

As a fan of claw games whose skills need (a lot of) polishing, I can tell you you right off the bat that grabbing this Munchlax plushie would be nothing short of a royal headache. Rotund, smooth, and with precious few protruding parts, grabbing this Munchlax would be like trying to grab ahold of… well… a very round Munchlax!

Man oh man.

Maaan oh man.

OVERALL:

To close this review, I’m going back to my original sentiments.

Soft, smooth-furred, squashy but firm, sitting over 60cm tall, and looking like the real Munchlax from the Pokemon series, what’s NOT to love about this plush Munchlax?

Absolute nothing, that’s what!

Geebuz, but I can’t help but love this plush Munchlax!

Over and out,
Aith