Puffkins is a series of spherical

stuffed animal A stuffed toy is a toy with an outer fabric sewn from a textile and stuffed with flexible material. They are known by many names, such as plush toys, plushies, lovies and stuffies; in Britain and Australia, they may also be called soft toys ...

s distributed by

Lisle, Illinois Lisle ( ) is a village in DuPage County, Illinois, DuPage County, Illinois, United States. The population was 22,390 at the 2010 census, and in 2019 the population was recorded to be 23,270. It is a south-western suburb of Chicago in the Illinois ...

-based Swibco. It was introduced in 1997 as a competitor to

Beanie Babies Beanie Babies are a line of stuffed toys created by American businessman Ty Warner, who founded Ty Inc. in 1986. The toys are stuffed with plastic pellets ("beans") rather than conventional soft stuffing and come in many different forms, mostly ...

. Puffkins are sold with a tag containing a birthdate and poem, and like Beanie Babies, the toys have new designs introduced and other designs retired. Although Puffkins were retired in 2002, Swibco re-introduced the line as Puffkins 2 in 2007 with mostly the same design.

History

Swibco, a toy company based in

, introduced the Puffkins line on May 24, 1997. Thirteen different Puffkins designs were released on that day. Like

, every Puffkin wore a heart-shaped swing tag bearing a name, poem and birth date, and various designs were retired and introduced periodically. Certain designs of the toys were also considered more valuable, usually because of a low production number or a rarely seen color variation. The most valuable was a

white tiger The white tiger (ashy tiger) is a leucistic morph of the tiger, typically the Bengal tiger. It is occasionally reported in the Indian wilderness. It has the typical black stripes of a tiger, but its coat is otherwise white or near-white, and ...

named Snowball; the first Puffkin to be retired, its original design sold for as high as $150. Puffkins are designed in a spherical form without arms, and measure about in diameter, with a smaller

keyring A keychain () (also keyring) is a small ring or chain of metal to which several Key (lock), keys, or fobs can be attached. The terms keyring and keychain are often used interchangeably to mean both the individual ring, or a combined unit of a r ...

variation measuring . Swibco retired the Puffkins line in 2002, but restarted the toy line in 2007 under the name Puffkins 2, which feature largely the same design but are made of a softer material.

References

Products introduced in 1997 1990s toys Stuffed toys 2000s toys {{Toy-stub