Plushie Dreadfuls Review | Plushie Dreadfuls
A semi-popular online brand by the name of Plushie Dreadfuls has dedicated years to creating plushies dealing with sensitive topics (like mental health) with the help of the public’s opinions. The question is, why exactly do they create designs around these topics?
How they were founded
The company that runs Plushie Dreadfuls, Mysterious, was founded in 2015 by couple American McGee and Yeni Zhang. McGee currently works as a game developer; he has created PC and mobile games, including Alice: Madness Returns, The Gate, Critter Academy and more. Those interested can find out more about his projects through his Linkedin.
Yeni Zhang, or Vanessa Zhang on Linkedin, is an excellent fashion designer. She describes herself as an, “Experienced Senior Design Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the textiles industry.”
The couple and their two children live and run their business from Shanghai, China, and have a small team of roughly five employees from around the world.
Variety of plushies
While these designs vary in complexity and type, ultimately all of the plushies are intended for adults. McGee answered a series of questions asked by the community, one of which was in regards to the age range for the company’s products.
“[The plushies are marketed towards adults] because the themes and concepts contained in our Plushie Dreadfuls often deal with complex subjects,” McGee explained.
These complex subjects often include topics of mental health and LGBTQ+ identities. In fact, some best-sellers include anxiety and gender dysphoria.
Each plushie (often rabbits) is designed to represent mental or physical disorders and disabilities, LGBTQ+ identities, human emotions or brighter subjects like the zodiacs. These plushies are created with the hopes that consumers will be able to find something that represents a part of them, and potentially use the plushies to cope with things like mental health.
McGee creates these plushies due to personal beliefs. These beliefs stem from traumatic situations and tragic feelings throughout his life.
“I believe in facing your fears and using the difficulties of life as catalysts for positive transformation and personal growth. Instead of hiding our issues and stigmatizing them, we should drag them out into the light and expose them for all to see. In this way, we rob them of the power to control us,” McGee said.
Giving people the power to take their struggles into their own hands in this way has proven meaningful to many buyers of Mysterious’s products. Roman Crick is one of these customers.
“I think that they are really cute and their design makes them feel more adult-friendly in terms of judgment from others. I also really like that their designs represent a lot of disorders and conditions because it’s cool to have something more than a flag or a button,” Crick said.
Of course, these products are not sold just for personal gain. A portion of Plushie Dreadful’s revenue is used to donate to organizations of marginalized groups, animal rescue organizations, research for rare diseases and more. Public donations can be found here, while private donations are kept private to protect the identities of individuals at risk.
Crowd Design
The primary way that Mysterious designs their plushies is through Crowd Design. This method allows those with these conditions or who want to be more involved in the design of a certain plushie to contribute their thoughts and opinions.
“The general goal in our design process is that we, the team at Mysterious, don’t actually ‘design’ the products that you see in our shop. You, the audience, drive the designs based on your personal experiences with the themes and topics that we’re exploring,” McGee said.
The usual process of Crowd Design is that Mysterious will present a concept sketch for a new plushie design, and the community (via Instagram and Facebook) will provide comments on the design and how it can be improved. That way, the plushie will have design elements approved by those with the condition it is representing, and from the general public.
Those with more questions about Mysterious’ process of choosing topics, creating the pushies and more can visit their Common Questions and Concerns page.
Opinions
I currently own one plushie– the Medusa rabbit– and I can confidently say this is one of the highest quality plushies I have ever owned. They use high-quality materials when they create their plushies, and the added touch of knowing this design was finalized by the people brings me joy.
As someone who identifies as LGBTQ+ and has been diagnosed with mental illnesses, I think this company is vital in showing the world that their struggles are not something to hide away. In fact, just as McGee says, they should be embraced (figuratively and literally) to help cope with them, rather than hiding them away.
Embracing and accepting innate parts of yourself is an important step in the healing process– and if your starting point is by treating yourself to a plushie from Plushie Dreadfuls, that is a step in the right direction.
