Today (or rather yesterday) marked the official start of the Monthly Pikachu series. Every month, a new Pikachu plush will go on sale. The Pikachu will resemble some aspect of the month it’s representing.
For the first month, April, we have the fresh out of university Pikachu! In Japan, most kids graduate from school and start their first jobs, which is why this Pikachu makes sense.
The plush turned out pretty cute, as expected, although the positioning of the glasses can make or break it. A lot of the Pikachus look drunk because their glasses are half on and half off their faces! If I were to get two plush, I would be tempted to remove the glasses on one and just have a suave suit wearing Pika.
As a completely unannounced surprise, the mascot plush from special mini Pokemon stores suddenly appeared. These plush are usually only available at their respective mini stores (Tokyo station, various airports around Japan), but having them, even for a limited time, all together in one location, is nice. It would have been even nicer if the larger size plush were included as well, but I guess I should be grateful even for this. A friend of mine picked up the larger size plush from the Kansai International Airport, so I had to get the tiny one to match.
New mega-evolution plush also went on sale! My favorite of the bunch was Mega Mawile. Her venus fly trap hair is amazing (although makes the plush a little bulky) but I think her final design is great!
Mega Gallade, looking suave as ever.
Mega Gardevoir is my second favorite from the batch. I love her voluminous skirt, and she even has little legs under the skirt.
New cookies went on sale as well. This cookie tin features a super cute Pikachu design and contains two flavors of cookies: green tea and vanilla. Both are yummy, but the green tea is very strong, so if you don’t like green tea, you might not like them.
Finally, a bunch of new Pikachu themed clearfiles also appeared, alongside the Monthly Pikachu promotion. Most are pretty standard or defaulty, but the two pictured are my favorite.
The Pokemon Center was fairly crowded for a not so exciting release day, mainly because of a tretta tournament, which meant there were more kids than usual. Based on today’s turn out, I don’t expect these plush to sell out quickly.
