The Wacky World of Weird Promotional Plushes - Bonzi Buddy, DeviantArt, & More!

[Music] in the past I've always looked at plushies as a form of art that might sound strange but when you think about it someone out there had to design a pattern and produce all of these I mean come on you can't look at this funky Kong plush and tell me it's not art so much time and effort goes into designing even just one of these guys not to mention designing their tags is their marketing material and all of the behind the scenes work that happens a lot of talent and skill goes into the design of stuff like plushies and I don't think many people realize that however well it is true that many plushies give fans of these characters a way to either play with them or simply have a physical representation of their favorite characters at the end of the day plushies are made to sell they're made to promote and advertise the brands and franchises they represent as some plushies are more obvious with this than others but because plushies are an excellent form of marketing many companies have taken to plush designers to produce ones based off of their products or brands and that's what I'm gonna look at today these promotional brand items will lead to some of the oddest plushies you'll find like for example here's a lovely plush of the Aflac duck of all characters we've also got an endless plushies of Chuckie Cheese and his gang and don't even get me started on all of the McDonald's plushies out there and who could forget the catalog of plushies based off of the coca-cola polar bear a lot of these are cheap pretty worthless plushies but some are pretty fascinating well there isn't much to be said about something like a crazy frog plush as some do have interesting stories to them in this video I'll be going over some of the wackiest brand promotional plushies I can find this will likely be one of the strangest videos I'll ever make and with that said let's begin this is the wacky world of weird promotional brand plushies let's begin with one of the strangest examples you can find of a promotional plush if you don't recognize this guy here allow me to have the pleasure of introducing him to you this is bond Z buddy the titular mascot of the program bond Z buddy a desktop buddy program that was popular around the early 2000s if the history of on Z buddy is something far out of the scope of this wacky plush overview video and there are already excellent videos on the subject but to summarize bond see buddy was a program similar to Microsoft's office assistant program seat back in the early 2000s lots of people were getting to use the internet for the first time and as sovereign knew a lot of people didn't understand it that's where bonzi came in Ponzi buddy as well as other similar software is served to be sort of like an internet tour guide as you explored the enriching 1999 World Wide Web he'd always be on screen cracking jokes and maybe if you're lucky actually helping you over time he'd learn your interests and help you find other cool crazy sites you're probably not actually interested in here's what the official bonds you buddy website had to say about the program welcome to the world of Ponzi buddy he will explore the Internet with you as your very own friend and sidekick he can talk walk joke browse search email and download like no other friend you've ever had he even has the ability to compare prices on the products you love and help you save money best of all he's free while the official site is long gone mirrors of it to exist so you can still see the marketing genius a Ponzi buddy in all its glory he will learn from you once he knows your likes and interests he will search the world and find new sites you have not yet discovered or traveled to Wow he'd do all of that just for me Ponzi buddy what a sweetheart he can kiss and hug friends and loved ones all over the world on your behalf he will deliver the message himself and even talk and express emotions for you hi yes bonzi please hug and kiss my loved ones for me what an appealing sounding product if the program was distributed by Ponzi software originally popping up in 1999 and being discontinued in 2004 going off of all of that it should be no surprise that Ponzi buddy caught on and became a fairly well-known piece of software unfortunately however it was soon discovered that not all was right with Ponzi buddy this happy-go-lucky purple ape was a cover-up as the program was spyware Ponzi buddy was advertised as being able to learn about your online tendencies but that meant the program actively tracked and collected information about its users along with that and managed many of your browser and computer settings without your permission it could also be classified as adware as it created many pop-up ads which it claimed were based off your interests but were still ads nonetheless bonzi buddy was deemed as a malware virus and people quickly caught on eventually bonzi software was taken to court over bonzi buddy won in 2002 they were hit with a class-action lawsuit regarding the deceptive ads the software produced the company ended up paying over 100 seventy thousand dollars in legal fees before the discontinuation of bonzi body the company had to pay another seventy five thousand dollar fee for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act all of this was clearly bad news and bonzi body was discontinued in 2004 for years everyone knew bonzi body as an annoying piece of spyware but thanks to the internet latching onto the character through hilarious dreams by people like Joel from vine sauce a bonzi buddy has become truly infamous nowadays tons of people including me love bonzi ironically with all of this new love for Vaughn see buddy it may come as a surprise that there actually is an official plush of the character yes this spyware virus program got a promotional plush this plush was manufactured and released in 2001 though you couldn't simply buy it with money it's not like you could walk into your local Toys R Us or RadioShack in 2001 and pick up your brand-new bonzi buddy plush or something like that no many plushies based off of brands or mascots are made as promotional items usually being giveaways for when a consumer met a certain requirement in this case if this Ponzi plush was a reward for being part of the bond Z buddy gold membership program bond Z's so-called gold membership program was pretty controversial sure the website claimed the software was completely free but along with ads this membership is how Ponzi software had got money out of the program this software it constantly advertised it to its users saying you'd get wonderous benefits from it apparently one of those benefits was that you'd receive this plush as a thank-you gift of sorts it might be a wild assumption but I don't think many people signed up for the bouncy bunny gold membership so it doesn't seem like many of these were made or given away because of that very few survive today and the plush is now quite valuable and just recently at the time of me making this video this one sold at auction for nearly two hundred and twenty five dollars and Fonzie being a popular meme character nowadays has an entirely new fan base so this plush being from 2001 has huge demand it never had before leading to a huge spike in its value because of all this I'm very honored to say that I'm a proud owner of this bond Z buddy plush that's right sit down ladies and gentlemen this is the story of how I got my bond Z buddy plush I learned of this plushies existence shortly after learning about bond z buddy himself I really got to know the character thanks to Joel's incredible streams that featured him these streams were still are incredibly funny and I rewatched them every so often bond see buddy quickly became one of my favorite online oddities and I was very interested in its history being a plush collector I was very shocked to find out that an official plush of him actually existed however I could never find much info on it and trust me lots of great images of him were online but I imagine he was very scarce and I would never be able to own one I quickly learned that yes he was a reward for being a part of the elite group of humans known as bonds II buddy gold members which all but - and he hope I had of obtaining him for years now this listing of bonds II has been on eBay it was for a mint-condition bonsai buddy plush the listings images were very high quality and man was he great-looking however there was one slight problem if the listings price was $500 well I never saw myself paying that much for him so I carried on with my life however just recently I got back into looking for the plush and right around the time I was looking for him this auction went up with a starting bid of a hundred and twenty dollars it was already pretty high but I thought hey maybe I could make a funny video out of it and it'd be worth it then that auction ended for 225 as I mentioned earlier safe to say I did not win it however that five hundred dollar listing was still up I was curious as to how many bonzi plushies had actually sold on eBay so I checked the eBay archive site worth point and as I expected very few of them had been sold over the years however a whopping summit of the ten archives sales of the plush all seemed to come from the same seller that same listing hadn't been up for years it was the sellers selling off tons of old stock of the plush if they had multiple bonds II buddies so I quickly messaged them asking if they had anymore and if it was possible for me to buy one for you know less than five hundred dollars to my surprise if they graciously accepted my offer and I got one they also sent me this very blessed image of four bouncy buddies all together I don't think anyone else in the world has captured so much raw bonzi power together so this was truly a sight unfortunately these four were the only members of the bonsai gang they had left and I guess after selling me mine if they only had three how this person managed to get 14 plus bonzi bunny plushies I do not know perhaps they found a case of them after the gold membership failed to reach enough users to clear out stock I imagine a lot of the plushies produced originally one without owners as not many people were conned into the membership program so tons of unsold stock had to exist and while very few of these seem to still be in circulation today I guess this seller ended up with a ton of them and the seller was super nice and I allowed me to get it for a fraction of their original asking price and just a few days after paying for it bonzi body was officially in my house somehow my house didn't immediately crumble at the mere presence of bonzi so I'm able to give you guys a close-up in hand to look at him first off I want to say that while buncee buddy is treated as nothing more than a joke today I guess the company really did believe he would catch on because wow this is a really great plush I'm not joking this guy is seriously high-quality he might be the best bonzi buddy related thing there is the materials used are super soft and vibrant his pattern is spot-on and he has big plastic eyes that capture his cartoony look perfectly one cool feature of this plush is that he has a Velcro on his hands so he can pull off his signature pose if you want however you can free his arms fans of 90s Nintendo plushies will be surprised to hear that this plush was made by none other than bDNA the company responsible for the Nintendo collectibles plush line from the late 90s meaning the same company that made these also made this bonzi buddy plush as the tag on this plush is also really great it features that distinct Ponzi style of not really looking that good but still being pretty charming we've got the famous Ponzi render of him balancing the globe on his fingertips as he is known to do along with the software is far from the truth tag line your best friend on the net the back of the tag is really special it features an in character description of Ponzi buddy I'll let the big man say it himself welcome to internet travel I'm your conscience a new way to interact with your computer I'm your interactive friend and traveling companion on the Internet I walk talk sing browse and search the internet with you I learned your likes and interests and automatically finds websites you have not yet discovered the more you use me the smarter I become right anyway this plush is seriously well-made and super cool if you wish to find one good luck cuz he'll run you quite a lot unless you get lucky but he's totally worth searching for I mean look at him she's bonzi buddy your best friend on the net while I collect these plushies out of pure love for these characters it is true that there will always be a bit of nostalgia attached to these guys one thing I'm super nostalgic for is old web sites they used to browse when I was younger now I was never an active user but as a certified 2000s kid you could find me quite often on deviantART com whether I was looking at general artwork comics animations you name it I spent a lot of time browsing the site devianart was really popular in the 2000s so I'm sure many of you can relate to this one thing that always stood out to me about da was its mascot well many of you probably recognize this guy you might not know his name this is fella and he's been the deviantART mascot since 2001 the fellow was originally designed by the user switched the design was created for a contest to design a mascot for the site a fellow won and has been the main mascot of the site ever since he's gone through a few design changes with his current look being the one most people now before this design was introduced however if l have received an official plush who could be purchased on the official deviantART store the plush was designed by the same user who would later go on to redesign fella advocate chaos here's an original piece of concept art for the plush and here are some turnaround concepts of the plush as well it's awesome that so much design work for this guy is available online publicly he was first put up for pre-order in 2007 on the official deviant ware store and he was available shortly after that he quickly sold out but was restocked a few times considering how much work went into this guy it's no surprise that this plush turned out great he's a good 12 inches or so in length so he's quite large and captures the mid-2000s look fella had very well this is a plush of this design of the character and not the 2008 redesign we know today because of that he has a very detailed eyes and the old deviantART logo tattooed on his body his details are embroidered and look really nice the fella is a very simply designed character so having these be embroidered makes a fairly simple plush appear far higher quality than a would have otherwise also thankfully his seam lines are not nearly as noticeable as they were on this old piece of concept art my fella is the original release of the plush however after devianart changed its logo styling he was re-released with in my opinion a much nicer place logo if the wrist the plush remained the same however this was the last release of the plush before the store shut down meaning he's no longer made and no longer available for purchase unfortunately the devianart stole shut down on May 29th 2013 and no future fellow plush has been released it's also unlikely one ever will be as he's not that prominent on deviantART anymore before the store closed however another devianart plush was released this one being of a super llama well not as iconic as fella llamas were a huge part of deviantART back in the day so this is a really nice thing to have if you're a fan of the site you could also buy these guys in a cheaper bundle together the fellow was also re-released in a bundle with two exclusive fella stickers exciting stuff I know his tag is unfortunately pretty basic simply saying I'm a fella plushie though it does have an in character description on the back which is always a nice touch as I said I was never a huge deviantART user but the site does have a special place in my heart and I have a ton of memories of the site from when I was younger having this plush is a nice reminder of those memories now I'd consider myself a man of culture not because I collect things like Sonic the Hedgehog plushies know I'm a man of culture because for years now I've been an eater of Tony's pizza don't worry this isn't a sponsored video or anything I've just always loved Tony's pizza ever since I was young I have no idea why well besides it being really good but when it came to frozen pizza I'd always mess with Tony's Tony's Pizza has a fairly interesting history as it's written in stone on the Tony's Pizza website the story goes that in 1960 Tony and his brother-in-law dick set up to create the perfect pizza in their pizzeria blah blah blah they eventually made some really good frozen pizza if they've done things like how to hook up with Nintendo in 2002 with a Game Boy Advance promotion is they even had a promotion with Spy Kids 3d game over and if that's not a sign of quality I don't know what is Tony's Pizza has a mascot has any good pizza company should chef Tony himself Essene proudly on every Tony's product this guy is pretty great so what does a man want more than a plush of a mascot from a frozen pizza box I'll tell you what nothing and good news were in luck believe it or not an official plush of chef Tony exists you can get a physical representation of a man of the myth of the legend Tony if you think that's weird get this there isn't just one plush of this dude but three there's this standard stylized 12-inch plush a more detailed but smaller 10-inch plush and pretty creepy looking flat 2d plush if this thing is 22 inches tall so just imagine having this thing in your house this plush of him was made by our be toy design and was available around 1999 as a free mail and reward you got him if you collected enough proof of purchase points for buying store-bought frozen pizza nowadays you can find them for dirt cheap online it's so straight to see that not only does a plush exist of a literal frozen pizza mascot not only do three of them exist but they're actually pretty decent well at least this one is as he's very well made he's really accurate to the design of the character he's posed he has his signature poofy tomato hat and his hair is really bushy if this plush reminds me of those old creepy looking Mario plushies specifically the ones by Acme I'm so glad this guy exists I'm so happy that people were paid to design a pattern and manufacture a plush of a frozen pizza mascot now when I go to my kitchen to prepare a fresh store-bought Tony's pizza he can be there with me he can follow me as I unwrap the pizza heat my oven up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit I'll leave the pizza in there for 30 minutes even though the box says 19 he can even be there when I take it out and take my first bite of that crispy delicious mouth-watering Tony's pizza yeah move over soap shoes sonic this guy is now a contender for my favorite plush of all time and joking aside I mean I guess it's cool such an accurate plush of the character exists uh Who am I kidding the world would be so much worse if this guy didn't exist Thank You chef Tony for all you've done for us well there are countless plush is made for serious like Mario and Sonic a certain video game mascots get very few items made of them many of these lesser-known character plushies have fallen far into obscurity giving fans little hope of ever obtaining them one such plush is this guy what you're looking at is an official promotional bubsy the Bobcat plush manufactured in 1993 bubsy much like bonzi body has become very notorious however back during the release of his first game if the company accolade really believed their bubs he would become a big deal several games were made a cartoon pilot was produced but no show ever materialized and a lot of promotional goods were created however bubsy didn't last long and while he's back now if there was a huge gap in time where nobody merchandise was produced that means that what does exist is very hard to find as not bubs he does have some pretty dedicated fans fans who'd do anything to get any merch they can find of this character the true bubsy merch holy grail however is this plush information on this guy is very scarce as he was never actually commercially released and was only ever given away to employees of accolade this plush has been high on my want list for years bubsy is such a wacky character so the fact that there's an official plush is really crazy to me it's really cool only a handful of images of this plush have popped up over the years it doesn't even seem like any I've ever been sold on eBay and I don't know about you but I don't personally know anyone with this mythical bubsy plush so these images and brief recounts are all we have to go off of here's a tweet from 2011 with an image of the plush for some more concrete info however there's this 2013 post from the forum site atari age hosted by a very dedicated bub c fan going by the name of dr. clue all about bubsy merchandise in the post they relay a message they received from another user named Jenny n whose dad allegedly worked at accolade back during Bob C's prime time Jenny message dr. clue us they were happy to see such a dedicated fan of bubsy they shared many interesting tidbits regarding the unique position they were in having a dad who worked with the bubsy series if they recounted that their dad used to come home with random pieces of bubsy merchandise one day even coming home in a bubsy mascot costume wild stuff and they also talked about how they used to go to accolades headquarters and saw some crazy stuff there including this plush that confirms that yes he is official and was an internal item that could be taken home my employees they said that at the accolade headquarters they had a whole drawer full of the plushies a whole drawer full of bubsy plushies considering how nonexistent this guy is nowadays that is crazy to think about it reminds me of how Sega had a good 40 or so soaps used sonic plushies hanging out at the sonic cafe if they ended the message by saying that they would follow up with more pictures of the plush as well as get this pictures of his companion if this would seemingly be a plush of Arnold v armadillo Bugsy's sidekick dozen Arnold plush exists that's way more insane than just above see plush existing unfortunately though no evidence of that beyond this post has surfaced online what a many people above see plush may not seem that special I'm sure there are tons of bubsy fans who desperately want this guy once again similar to bond Z buddy this plush looks to be incredibly well-made he's made of high quality soft materials he has a fully detailed shirt vibe in plastic eyes and all around looks like a perfect plush of the bub stir while I was fortunate enough to find the bond see buddy plush I've regret to say I have never been able to find this plush of bubsy I doubt I'll ever get one of these guys but it's such a cool piece I can't imagine more than a handful of these ever existed and very few must still exist today most of you watching you likely know above zis infamy not many people really respect the character or his games what she is understandable I'm not a huge fan of the games myself but his design is pretty cool and this is an awesome plush however it seems the hatred of bubsy extended beyond the general public even the developers above Z dislike the guy in an interview regarding the development of bub c2 it was revealed that a designer of the game mm-hmm stabbed a pencil through the head of one of these Bugsy plushies and then hung it by its neck in their workplace as a way to cope with their anger of the character I get that working on Bobbsey - must have been a painful experience but come on he's so cute here how could you stab this what an incredible story oh my gosh with that said though it makes it even more likely that a lot of these were probably just thrown out if the developers themselves didn't like the character and they were the ones with these plushies why would they keep them around however there is at least one case of the plush being given away to the general public I can't find much info on this but apparently there was a contest to promote the TV show pilot and if this person is to be believed one of the prizes was this plush unfortunately if they couldn't provide pictures of him but that means that at least one bubsy plush was given away as for the fates for all those Bub's use in those drawers hopefully they didn't all get stabbed if the developers probably just gave them away to their relatives or something I'm not sure if this is related at all but the official bubsy twitter account once referenced a bubsy beanie babies sound plush that was never made perhaps this plush is the one they're talking about assuming this isn't just a joke considering how well-made the plushies I'm not sure if he was ever meant to be more than just an employee giveaway but it is possible on the subject of failed mascots made into plushies a lot of characters similar to bubsy head plushies made of them I mean if you're designing a character to be recognizable enough to be a mascot of course you'd make a plush of them did you know that there's an official blinks the time sweeper plush how about an official klonoa plush this one has actually always been one of my most wanted plushies ever since I got into collecting two plushies of klonoa were made back when the first game in the series was released if they both look similar with one being a large and stuffed while the other is smaller and filled with beans through a release in a set of Namco plushies and UFO catchers in Japan and have become very hard to find I rarely see any for sale and they always demand a very high price tag and that's the case with a majority of the plushies of these obscure characters these characters do have very dedicated fans out there and these plushies will likely forever be the only ones made of them so fans will pay anything for a chance to grab these guys I think it's great that those fans have an official plush to collect up their favorite character we rarely see plushies of characters like these made nowadays by now it should be clear that promotional plushies can be some of the most interesting plushies out there ones like Fonzie buddy and bub see have such interesting sometimes even tragic stories and those stories are super fascinating to me it's great when a plushies not only just a really nice collectible on its own but has a story to go with it history to make it worth more than just the item itself on its own this is just a slightly above average plush of a purple gorilla but all of the context and sentimental appeal brought by up being bonzi makes it so funny and really cool there were a lot more examples of bizarre and out their promotional plushies but I think you get the idea and the best part is if there isn't much demand for a majority of these guys like I said the chef Tonee plush for example can be found for really cheap though some can become very valuable if the brand associated with them becomes popular like what happened with Ponzi I hope you've enjoyed this interesting look at a section of plush collecting not often explored I'm sure many of you have memories of these strange promotional plushies and I hope this video has brought back some good memories whether they have a fascinating story if they remind you of a good memory or they're simply funny these plushies are some of my favorites for how unique they truly are [Music] [Music]

Channel: PatMac

Views: 596,580

Rating: 4.9451604 out of 5

Keywords: Plush, Bonzi Buddy, Bubsy, Toys, DeviantArt, Pizza

Id: 8533MJDpBac

Length: 23min 42sec (1422 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

I want that Coca Cola polar bear now haha