Puffballs Jellycat

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Cute toys that are reasonably priced
Disadvantages:	One can justify the purchase of only so many such toys

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

My heart is easily stolen. I love babies and kittens and small, cuddly toys. And I’ve loved Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle for as long as I can remember. She may be prickly on the outside, but I can guarantee that she’s cuddly on the inside. Some might say that Mrs. T-W was an invention of Beatrix Potter, but as for me, I’m sure Beatrix was just the biographer.

Given this series of confessions, it may not be too surprising to learn that I’m a sucker for a hedgehog toy--particularly a tiny hedgehog toy about the size of, say, a Beanie Baby. Finding my first Jellycat puffball in a small Irish gift shop--a hedgehog no less--thus came as a happy discovery. I was unaware that these little treasures even existed. I snapped her up immediately, paid the 6-euro adoption fee, and promised her a good home on the other side of the pond. (“Her” in honor of Mrs. T-W, of course.)

My hedgehog occupied places of honor in our rooms throughout the rest of our recent holiday in Ireland and England, but I thought no more about Jellycat or puffballs. I would probably have noticed other hedgehogs, but I didn’t “look” for Jellycat toys on a wider basis. I was content to let my discovery stand as a unique find.

The Jellycat hedgehog is a squat little creature with a whimsical face. She has the oversized, cone-shaped nose of her genus and species, and her ears are set slightly off-center of where they ought to be. Measuring about 5 inches in height, she sits in an upright position. Her body is pear shaped and covered with soft, shaggy fake fur--no prickles for this hedgehog! Her face, “hands” and “feet” are made of a velour-textured cloth. The body is a medium brown, which contrasts well with the face, hands and feet, which are a lighter brown in color. The nose, eyes, mouth, “fingers,” and “toes” are accented in black.

All dangly extremities--including the hedgehog’s nose and ears, as well as her hands and feet--appear to be sewn in rather than glued. This makes the toy all the safer for little hands, and indeed she is marked for child safety (though no minimum age is indicated). She was created using all new materials, including polyester fiber and plastic pellets to fill her body. The hang tag reads, “I am Puff Ball Hedgehog: Please look after me.”

Having leaved the lesson of hang tags and tush tags from Ty, I kept my hedgehog’s appendages all intact and, on returning home, determined to find out more about Jellycat, which the tush tag indicates is headquartered in London.

From internet sources, it seems that Jellycat toys first started to appear in the UK in 1999 and made their debut in the States only a few months ago. Roughly following the Ty model, Jellycat offers a number of often-interelated product lines, providing soft toys and pillow pals and other miscellaneous items in a number of sizes. As with Ty, Jellycat provides a continuously changing series of products and uses new introductions and retirements to appeal to collectors. The puffball product range offers toys in three sizes: Large puffballs measuring about 25 cms, medium puffballs measuring about 15 cms, and baby puffballs measuring about 10 cms.

The hedgehog’s hang tag refers the public to www.jellycat.com, which seems to be a site devised solely to air a cute, product-oriented internet movie and eventually to provide links for sites containing more tangible consumer-oriented information. I followed the link for www.justjellycat.co.uk (which includes a link to a US retailer) to find desciptions of various Jellycat products.

Despite my joy over the discovery of my little hedgehog, I’m not inclined toward rushing out to assemble a wide-ranging Jellycat collection. Still, given the number of cats and kitties available in Jellycat’s various product lines, one never knows. I DO love kitty cats. . . .