The Current - Why stuffed animals appeal so much to kids — and adults

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

The stuffed toys called Jellycats are one the most sought-after items this Christmas, fetching high prices and even inspiring large-scale theft. Max Genecov, a proud stuffed animal collector, explains why Jellycats and other plushie pals have such an appeal for kids and adults alike. 

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Whale, ice cream, cup, cake, wobbly one. Whale, ice cream, cup, cake, wobbly one. A young girl is sharing her favorite jellycat stuffed toys on TikTok. The wobbly one is a leak, by the way. That's right, a stuffed plush leak. What, you might ask, is a jellycat?

It is a wildly popular brand of stuffed toys, appearing on plenty of Christmas lists this year. a wildly popular brand of stuffed toys, appearing on plenty of Christmas lists this year. Think soft, velvety plushies in the shape of everything from animals to food to planets and sad rats. I don't want to see any new jelly cat plushies unless it's my guy, Lachlan Sad Rat. Like, truly, he's the only one I care about. He's the only one I will ever care about. Alas, Lachlan the Sad Rat has sold out everywhere. You might have noticed that was a grown-up desperately seeking a stuffed sad rat. Jellycats, it turns out, are not just popular with kids. Social media is filled with adults showing off their jellycat collections. I am one of those grown women who collects jellycats and every single one of them has a name. So let me

show you the family. This is Wilbert. He was the first jellycat I ever got, and I got it as a gift for my boyfriend. He's Kung Fu Panda, Spotty, Baby, Airhead, Nelson. Jellycats are even the target of crime. Earlier this year, a man was arrested in Richmond, British Columbia after a cache of stolen toys worth $150,000 was found, many of them jellycats, and police thanked, in their words, the jellycat community for helping find the toys. Jellycats join a long line of stuffed animals that have captured imaginations from squishmallows to beanies all the way back to the original teddy bear. Max Jenikov is a PhD student in clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, a proud stuffed animal collector. He wrote an essay in the New York Times Magazine

recommending stuffed animals for adults. He is in Philadelphia. Max, good morning. Good morning. Tell me about Sloth and Patricia the Couch Pigtail. Okay, so Sloth is a very handsome sloth. He comes from the Pusheen universe of stuffed toys and characters. He's a little stuffed animal friend

of mine. Patricia the Couch Pigtail is a stuffed animal I knit. A little less cuddly, made of some very nice wool, but a little less cuddly of it, but very cute and propped up there. Yeah, they're very adorable. And they're part of your stuffed animal collection? Yes, they are. How many stuffed animals do you of your stuffed animal collection? Yes, they are.

How many stuffed animals do you have? Oh, I don't want to count. I have tapered off buying them recently just because I don't have much space or money. And I have a baby, so he's enjoying them mostly now. But are we talking like tens, dozens, hundreds? Oh, not hundreds. Probably a few dozen. Like, yeah, probably that.

There are a few baskets in various rooms. And they all have names and personalities? Yeah, pretty much all of them do. They all have something that goes on with them, even if they are just kind of a cute little budgie. I guess that's the most recent one is I got a little budgie, actually. My sister-in-law got it for my baby. It's small, squishy, and his name is Jeremy, we decided.

Do you have to fight with the baby for them? I mean, do you sleep with them? I mean, I've got a—like, the sloth, actually, is probably—I don't know. He's a good size for just kind of like holding as an accessory pillow in bed. And he's very, like, comforting to look at and hold. But most of them don't get into bed. That would be a very busy full bed. You write about playing with them.

What does that look like? I mean, describe the play. Like often, it's like, I mean, with my son, of course, but even with my wife, it's just like, or even by myself, it's just kind of like looking at them, imagining what's but, um, my, even with my wife, it's just like, or even by myself, it's just kind of like looking at them, imagining what's going on in their heads, um, like putting on a voice and like putting it up to, uh, my wife's like face and doing some sort of character to it. Um, that's, that's often what it is. Um, but yeah, when it is just

by yourself, like, it's just kind of like you of like you're in a reflective mood and you're like looking at them and it's kind of like you're having a little bit of a conversation with them in your head or just like bouncing ideas off or even just like looking at their eyes and seeing that they're looking at you, seeing yourself reflected in them a little bit. You have a baby, you're married. Yes. You write in the New York Times, I mean, you're an adult, you write in the New York Times magazine about recommending playing with stuffed animals as adults. What do you get out of that? Yeah, so I think that it cultivates a sense of like gentle, playful reflectivity in you, like I described it as doodling with your emotions. What does that mean? I mean, it's just like trying to like trying things on like gently

holding kind of like an emotion or something like whether it's positive or negative and um being kind to yourself with it um like wondering where like things are kind of going in your life or something that just happened um maybe with the stuffed animal it can it has an opinion on it or you imagine the stuffed animal in the same place as you, like in the same event. What would happen with them? Where would they take it? Those are the kinds of things that I kind of mean. It's a kind of assisted daydreaming that's like, it keeps it light, it keeps it gentle. And even when you are kind of, I don't know, if you're feeling worse, even like it can help to like just bring a little bit of lightness, some other kind of maybe even just a bit of a distraction, reminding yourself about like the other things in life and the things that are perhaps bothering you.

I mean, that's some sort of comfort in some ways. Yeah, certainly, certainly. Do you see a line between this, how you describe the comfort that they give you? And I mean, what you're studying in clinical psychology. Yeah, so I think that the kind of bulk of my research isn't entirely related. My research is, like, about the connections between clinical and positive psychology. And my clinical work, I see some relationship. I see patients under supervision.

But the patients have, a lot of them have stuffed animals. Like sometimes we have group sessions. These are patients with severe emotion dysregulation issues, chronic invalidation through their lives, other issues, substance issues, depression, all these sorts of things. And we have group skill sessions, and sometimes stuffed animals come on stream because people are just kind of holding them. We do group therapy uh virtually often so they're in their homes they have their they have their little guys around them um i think it's useful there

there's some research on that in like the clinical realm but um most recently uh i'm working i have a collaborator ryan nemick uh who's worked on a lot of stuff on character strengths. And he's become recently very interested in gentleness and how, like, gentleness relates to other kind of character strengths, virtues, aspects of well-being, pro-sociality, these sorts of things. So, like, I'm getting more into that. I got into talking to him about his research through talking about stuffed animals. And do you think that having the stuffed animals and having, I don't know if relationship is the right word, but certainly some interaction with them, that that can cultivate gentleness?

Yeah, I think so. It's definitely a practice in gentleness. Like you, like they make you feel, like, I mean, I think soft things make you feel gentle often. Like obviously with kids, they love throwing soft things because they won't destroy anything so like a nerf ball or something but um when you're holding it that feeling that kind of like level of like tactile detail even like of like a soft uh texture can make you key into like those details with it and then also the emotional aspect like appreciating those softer parts of yourself even, and it's, I think, good practice. Like you see it with kids, certainly.

What do you make of how big of a business this is? I mean, it's not just the jellycats. The stuffed animal industry, sales of these went up from $1.35 billion U.S. in the first half of 2021 to over two billion dollars in the same period this year what's going on do you think geez i mean i think that i think that we're in a bit of a collection boom uh like ever since probably the pandemic um people have been collecting all sorts of things a lot more versus because they had extra money to spend on things that they weren't going out for and i think people maybe are going out less, period, since the pandemic. And they're putting their money elsewhere. And I think Squishmallows,

which I think started before the pandemic, but like those are highly collectible. Jellycats are highly collectible, as you were just saying. But there's also, it sounds like people are looking for something. I mean, one of the things that you wrote in the piece is that it's shameful in some ways to admit that you haven't outgrown the needs that a stuffed animal would satisfy. Yeah, I think that maybe has changed, is changing. I mean, I think there's like people being open about it on social media is a big thing. I think people getting into them through their kids and being maybe more honest about that is a big thing too. But for people who don't have kids even, I think that there's like less shame about it,

more vulnerability. I think it's just maybe from people just being at home for a while more, you know, like that's their space. They maybe got the stuffed animals they do have or that they acquired. They have a closer relationship now. Like I have so many trinkets on my home office desk

that are staring at me all day. Not stuffed animals necessarily, but some of them, like really small guys. But maybe just people feel closer to them and because of that closeness, it feels more normal. What would you say to somebody who's an adult who is listening to this and said,

they have a difficulty wrapping their heads around this. They say, are you kidding me? I can't play with stuffed animals because I'm a grown-up. This is kid stuff, and it's not for an adult. I guess I would say, like, where's that kind of coming from? What do you have to lose if you do play with a stuffed animal? And it's a sense of, like, what I think about that is, like, it's a sense of it's just, like, not the right time or something.

There's a real pressure to be serious, to be productive, all these things. time or something. There's a real pressure to be serious, to be productive, all these things. And stuffed animals feel like very archetypically frivolous in a way. And people don't want to fritter away their time, even when they're playing video games often you see adults and they're just like locked in and they're not even playing it as a game, you know. That thing that you talked about, about how play is undervalued for adults. A hundred percent, yeah. Why do you think we do that? Why do we undervalue it? Because it's not, you can't get money or prestige out of it. I think that's a big thing, and that's what we're driven by, and what we're told to value. It's like, I have to make some money so this can all end up okay.

And then when that's all done, I just want to shut off. I don't want to kind of even cultivate something in myself which i think that stuffed animals can do but um yeah it's just it's not it's not valued in society if i can say something so broad do you have a favorite in your collection favorite stuffed animal i don't know if i have a favorite stuffed animal like if the house i mean we hope this never happens but if the house was on fire and you had to grab one as you run out. Oh my goodness. It would probably be, I'm just looking at it right now because it's on my desk with this.

I knit them, but my wife also makes them. She needle felts and she needle felted me a raccoon. And he's on my desk right now. So I might grab him. Is that because you like the raccoon or because your wife made it for you? Well you well i mean because because both he has this kind of look in his eyes like he needs some help um and normally so like uh there's like a bit of like pathos there he looks like he's asking for a treat maybe but um yeah a sense of closeness a sense of meaning like he's not so cuddly but he's certainly one of a kind yeah another option is that my uh raccoon i

grew up with i still have uh i have the baby sleep with that one mostly you still have it though yes i still have it he's up he's like probably up in the crib right now his bow fell off and i had to re-glue one of his uh re-glue his nose uh last month or so but he's good max thanks for talking to us about this. Of course. Thank you so much. Max Jenikoff is a PhD student in clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.