My wife, who designs stuffed animals, passed along this item to me with the note, “Just because you seemed desperate for something to write about,” as if the creature below (“Geeky Ninja”) were somehow ill-suited to my site:

Obvious bias notwithstanding¹, I think the field of collectible plush toys is more interesting right now than the stagnating vinyl toy scene, although the tiresome marketing tricks are mostly the same. Pro: “Ninjacon” is not a real thing, so it’s not a clumsy plug. Con: According to Tomopop, you can only get it at this weekend’s Wizard World convention in Chicago.

The good news is that the toy’s designer, Shawnimals, is bringing their Ninja line to a Nintendo DS game this October. The game has gotten good pre-release buzz, but then again, so has every video game ever made.

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1. To be clear, my wife isn’t in the collectible plush market. She designs knitted toy patterns so people can make the stuffed animals themselves. ↑