Why "Silvally Plushie"?

Silvally is a Pokémon that was announced a month or so after its pre-evolution, Type: Null. I had already become very fond of Type: Null, the lab rat weirdo with a mysterious helmet. (The Amber short before Pokémon: The First Movie changed me. I absolutely thought the genre of "scientists experiment on a group of teens and they get angst and cool powers" was so cool.)

I fell in love immediately. I was still in high school, I distinctly remember spending the whole day doodling "Silvadi", because Sun/Moon was the last generation that had information leak through CoroCoro first, and we didn't have an English name for about a day. But that didn't matter to me. I loved this cool dog from the moment I laid eyes on it.

For the rest of the release cycle, I paid very close attention and gave a lot of thought to what was up with Type: Null and Silvally, going through theories. Maybe they're uncatchable? Maybe there's something we don't know? I did correctly guess that they evolved through friendship, but that was pretty easy. I didn't realize they were Legendaries until the games came out.

The games came out, I loved them. My love for Sun/Moon is a whole other topic I could, like, write an article about someday, but the fact that Silvally was there absolutely helped. I cried the first time I read the Type: Null reports in the Aether Labs. (Even though Type: Full is an incredibly silly name.) I love these weird dogs, and I still mourn that they're probably never going to be available before the postgame. I would love to do a playthrough with a Type: Null…

So, as I do with all my other favorite Pokémon… I pondered the possible merch opportunities. To me, at the time, a plushie was a given. Silvally's plot-relevant! It scored pretty high in an Alolan Pokémon popularity poll at the time (8th place, over Alolan Ninetales and Incineroar)! Everyone seemed to generally feel positively about Silvally, especially since it was tied to Gladion, a lovable emo teen.

And the post-release merch cycle began. I started paying attention to every new release, just in case. The countdown truly began in mid-January, when a Jangmo-o plushie was announced, among others. This is notable because Jangmo-o was announced the exact same day Type: Null was, and if it was getting a plushie already, that means Type: Null (and by extension, Silvally) could be coming any day now.

Any day now.

The months passed. A Silvally figurine released, which I swiftly imported. A kids-toy, chubby Silvally figurine released, which I also bought (and is still absolutely adorable). Silvally and Null pins and keychains seemed to manifest on the Pokémon Center site with no fanfare one day. A really cool Silvally and Type: Null deck box released in November 2017, with a gorgeous heraldry motif. To this day, that's the only major merchandise Type: Null ever got. There were also a few Silvally-themed TCG box sets, as well as a Shiny Silvally distribution. (There was one Silvally TCG set that… no one seemed to buy, because I kept seeing them on clearance at Target years later. I ended up with 3 of the tiny Silvally figurines included with that set.)

A year in, my spirits were still high, because the merch cycle was not over. USUM had just been released. Silvally hadn't been in any of the marketing, but that's okay, I knew it was still plot-important. I had taken an oath of not getting any Pokémon plushies until Silvally's released, because that was the one I wanted above all others. When the Ultra Beast plushies were announced, I thought, this is it! Surely, they'll announce a Silvally, the Ultra Beast Killer, to go along with the Ultra Beasts!

The announcement never came. I watched other announcements come and go, and by the time the Sword/Shield merch cycle started, I realized the day would never come. I was without a Silvally plushie.

I still don't know why. Like, if Pokémon was a smaller brand, I wouldn't expect this out of them. But I've followed Pokémon my whole life, I have my finger on the pulse of their merch decisions, and I REALLY thought I would get more Silvally. The first conclusion one would come to is that Silvally is too complex to get a plushie, but again, they made every Ultra Beast into a plushie. Second conclusion is that Silvally would be too top-heavy to stand up on its own, but as someone who owns many Pokémon plushies, I can confidently say that they're not often made to stand on their own. Neither of these could truly be the problem.

The statistic I like taking out the most is the fact that, out of the 30 Alolan Legendaries— including alternate forms and Mythicals here— 26 of them got plushies. 87% of the Legendaries. The missing 4 are Cosmoem, Ultra Necrozma… and Type: Null and Silvally. There was even a bizarre case where there was a Shiny Tapu Koko plushie? Which is notable, because it's very rare for there to be official Shiny plushies. And they made one before a Silvally plush.

My desire never died. I did buy a wonderful crocheted Silvally in 2020, who is very cute and sits on my shelf to this day. There have been unofficial Silvally plushies for years, which I probably will buy someday, but I wanted something official. Pokémon plushies are incredibly high-quality, it's what I wanted more than anything. But now… my main hope is for Alola Sitting Cuties, which I project as coming out in about 2025. It'll be a bitter victory, but a victory nonetheless. Thank god that original Sitting Cuties line did well enough that they're currently onto Unova, because otherwise I would be completely out of luck on my quest.

The website name came on a whim. A whim where I thought, "you know what the funniest thing to name my website would be?" And I didn't have any better ideas, and it would be funny, so I went with it. And now, it stands as a monument to my tireless quest for the official Silvally Plushie.

(Other merch I didn't get to mention in my rant includes the Lillie Nendoroid, the cute Lillie+Nebby and Gladion+Silvally postcards/clearfile set, and some more obscure gacha/claw machine stuff out of Japan.)

Created	Last Updated
February 24th, 2023	February 13th, 2024