Hello! Sorry I haven't been here for a while. Unfortunately I've lost interest in video games in general and therefore no longer have anything useful to contribute, but I thought that I'd better drop in so that I could post this, because today I took delivery of the long-awaited official Lemmings plush. I ordered the plush from Gamerabilia earlier in the year, and after numerous delays on the manufacturer's end, he's finally here! It's now possible to order one and have it shipped right away, which is a plus for anyone who chose to wait and see how they turned out.



I decided to name this little guy Walker, after the standard definition shown when mousing over a lemming who has no skills applied to them.

He's up to the usual high quality standards of his manufacturer, Gaya Entertainment, and I have very few quibbles. In fact, the only two I can name, which I'll get out of the way before moving on to the positives, are that the edge of the shirt collar is left unfinished (but it's a non-fraying fabric, so this is just a personal opinion on how it was done, really), and that the neck is a bit floppy due to how large and heavy his head is (and even so, this gives him a cute quizzical expression, anyway). This latter point also means that he can't stand on his own unless there's something to prop him up with.

These plushes are modelled after the PSP/PS Vita Lemmings games, and the details are captured nicely, even down to the unusual hairstyle and the little tufts of hair sticking up at the back. The PSP/PS Vita-style Lemmings also have legs, unlike the earlier non-Sony Lemmings designs, and the plush reflects that. The fabric choices are nice and are appropriate - the clothing and eyes aren't fluffy, and the skin plush has a shorter pile than the hair plush, which is a nice touch. The eye details are embroidered, and this has been done nicely as well.

The packaging is minimal but nice - it's a single cardboard sheet with retro Lemmings graphics all over it, along with the relevant copyright, licensing, and address information on the back. It matches the theme of all of the other current merchandise. The plush is attached to the packaging by means of three plastic tags - one on the back of the head, and one on the front of each foot - which were very easy to remove.

The official Lemmings plush stands at around 8" tall, so he fits right in with the plush lemmings that I used to make (who ranged between 9" and 10" tall), which I'm really happy about! The feet have hard panels in their bottoms which allows the plush to stand as long as there is something to lean him against, as noted above.

Unlike last year's Bubble Bobble plushes from the same manufacturer, they didn't put the sound module in the arse this time. Instead, it's in the lemming's tummy. Squeezing it causes it to play numerous different sounds. Unfortunately, none of these include the iconic "Let's go!" and "Oh no!" from the original Amiga game, as they're all sound effects from the PSP and PS Vita games, but to make up for this, there are no less than eleven of them! The different clips are as follows;

"Let's go!"
"Hey-hey!"
"Hello!"
"Oh no!"
"Bye-bye!"
"Whee!"
"Geronimo!"
"Yippee!"
"Yeah!"
"Hooray!"
"Thankyou!"

This is the order that they're played in if you squeeze the lemming repeatedly.

To round this out, here are a few more pictures;


Walker, shown with Lemming, who my grandmother knitted for me when I was a youngster, and Darwin, the first of my self-made Lemmings plushes.


Front view.


Back view.


Right view.


Left view.

Thanks for reading, everybody - I hope that this information and the photographs are useful.

Haha, thanks for this.

I had a particularly good laugh at the translations relating to Pokemon, and the various singers, for some reason. Those were delightfully absurd.

Aw man, and I missed it!

The press release about the merchandising programme was unclear on that point, and it really wasn't helped by the included soundbite from the Sony licensing guy, either, since that muddied the waters.

At the very least, these plushes are more specifically in the PS Vita style, which I never found to be quite as bad as the PSP/PS3 look (right off, you can tell by the way that they don't look like weird bird-people ).

Anyway, I can only assume that they were referring only to specific licensees when they made those claims about the classic designs... You can see the key-art that GB Eye's got on the first page of this thread, for example. It's a faux-retro thing; I like it, I admit, but I would much rather have had that design on a t-shirt...

No word yet on what style is being used by any of the other licensees (we have yet to see the results of the clothing and stationery licenses, for example), or even on other items by the two who've actually got stuff ready to go (both GB Eye and Gaya Entertainment have stuff out, and hold the licenses for several different categories). I'd certainly love to see some stuff done in the true retro look, but I'm going to guess that we'll be seeing a lot more of the artwork that GB Eye put on that poster.

Little info-burst, guys: The official plushes are now up for pre-order.

UK outfit Gamerabilia is carrying them for £17.99 excluding shipping, and they do ship worldwide. I have no affiliation with them, I'm just a very happy multi-repeat customer! Also, I don't know of anyone else who's taking pre-orders for them right now.

Ok, I've been really lax on dealing with this thread lately, but I just heard some big news - the official plushes have finally been revealed! This is the main official merchandise that I've been waiting for, not just in the five or six months since the announcement, but also ever since I got into Lemmings way way back in 1993. It's been a damn, damn long wait.

Amazingly enough, they aren't retro-styled, which was somewhat unexpected given that the press release was very focussed on the whole retro thing. They are based on the later Sony-era artwork - that is, they have the tweaked, cuter look established with Lemmings Touch, rather than the slightly odd bird-people look of the PSP artwork. Also, they have a sound module built-in, which apparently has the classic "Oh No!" sound, though I wouldn't too be surprised if this turns out to be the PSP/Vita equivalent, to be honest.

Images below, borrowed from Gamerabilia, who will be selling these for £17.99.







I would have to say that they are very much up to Gaya Entertainment's usual high standards, and going on their track record to date, the final product is likely to be as good as or better than the prototype.

Having made so many plush lemmings myself, and having stopped because the official ones were announced, I'm really looking forward to the release of these, as you might imagine.

Typically, "XD" is meant to denote laughter. Having :XD: be a dead-looking emote here has always confused me (I always just use :D instead, for the intended meaning).