Since the origin of the teddy bear in 1902, a variety of plushies has been created resembling anything from legendary creatures to pop culture characters and from fruits and vegetables to planets and airplanes. If you are planning on buying a stuffed animal, it can be difficult to choose which of all the many fluffy creatures you should buy. When you have to buy the plushie as a gift, it can become even more difficult to choose. Which stuffed animals would be the best one to get?
Research to find the best stuffed animals
To find out which type of stuffed animal is the most popular, Dutch content creation company PPJR Productions conducted an independent online research for The Bite-Sized Backpacker and The Instaplushies to find out which plushies are the most wanted. The research utilized a dataset of 174,382 “plushie” and “stuffed animal” related search terms used in online search engines, amounting to approximately 2,098,010 active monthly searches by users in the United States. It was determined that 526,580 of those monthly searchers actively sought out specific types of stuffed animals, such as a monkey, giraffe or elephant. These searches were grouped per plushie type, resulting in a list featuring the 150 most sought-after stuffed animals.
This list does not include popular plushies targeted by name, such as Mickey Mouse, Pikachu, or Marvel characters.
Which stuffed animals are the most popular?
Unsurprisingly, the classic teddy bear is still the most popular stuffed animal. Online, 23.48% of all searches for specific plushies asking specifically for a bear. This figure does not include pandas, koalas or polar bears. Mankind’s domestic friends take the other two top spots: dog plushies and cat plushies respectively make up for 9.21% and 6.76% of all searches. The list continues with bunny plushies (3.39%), elephant plushies (3.20%) and non-specific monkey plushies (2.74%). This last category excludes all specific monkey searches, such as gorillas and orangutans. After the monkeys we see two mythological creatures, namely the unicorn plushies (2.68%) and dragon plushies (2.33%). The top 10 is rounded off by panda plushies (2.10%) and fox plushies (1.90%).
The Top 10 Most Popular Stuffed Animals
In list form, the top 10 best plushies for enhancing your life are:
Buy one of the best Top 10-plushies
It can be hard to find the best plushie for your child, friend, or partner, or even for yourself. Whether you buy the stuffed animal for a birthday, for Christmas, for Valentine’s Day, or for a different special occasion, there are many types of stuffed animals out there, and it’s not an easy choice to decide which one you’ll get. Based on the Top 10 most popular stuffed animals, we’ve selected the best plushies you can buy!
Plushie Facts: a Cuddly Infographic
The research revealed many wonderful details about popular stuffed animals, strange favorites and the popularity of several unique plushie designs. Did you know pets – such as our very own cats and dogs – are just as popular as plushies as they are in real life? Find out everything about the plushie research in our beautiful infographic!
The Top 30 Most Popular Stuffed Animals
Rounding out the Top 30 plushies are recognizable animals such as the tiger, giraffe, penguin and the lion, as well as the sloth, which was popularized as a plushie over the course of the last decade. A few legendary creatures appear, such as the monster (which included ghosts, demons, skeletons and other creepy creatures), the alien and the long extinct dinosaur. In terms of domesticated animals, the horse takes the top spot after the top 10.
In list form, positions 11 to 30 are taken by the following stuffed animals:
Buy one of the best Top 30-plushies
Not everyone is satisfied with buying a teddy bear, or a plushie elephant. The Top 30 highly diversifies your choices, yet still offers some amazing stuffed animal designs. Based on the Top 30 most popular stuffed animals, we’ve selected the best plushies you can buy on Amazon.com. From plushie horses to plushies cows, these are some of the best options out there.
The Complete Top 150 Stuffed Animals
Dipping below 1,00% of all searches, the sheep plushie at position 26 still receives 4,860 searches every month. Within the top 50 we also see some of the more obscure plushies popping up, such as the food-and-drinks plushies (including, among others, the beer plushie and the sushi roll plushie), the plushies shaped like a body part and the caterpillar, the platypus, and of course: the leopard plushie!
Going for the full top 100 stuffed animals, the list continues with non-specific bird plushies and bats. Here, the avocado plushie shines at number 59, which had a large enough amount of monthly searches to be separated from the “Foods and drinks” category at number 31. The avocado plushie became popular as a result of the large growth in avocado consumption since the 2000s. Consumption tripled, and the plushie thrived.
Other notable mentions within the top 100 are the classic zebra plushies, and alternative soft toys such as robots, blobfish, jellyfish, isopods and microbes. The snow men plushies at number 68 mainly earned their position thanks to Disney’s happy-go-lucky snowman Olaf from the Frozen franchise.
After the chipmunk plushies in position 100, the results showed another 50 plushie types which are frequently searched for, earning them an honorable mention on this list. The percentages here range from 0.05% to less than 0.01% which translates to roughly 310 to 10 monthly searches.
In this final list, we find many unique entries, such as pangolins, axolotls, quokkas, ants, moths, and creepy-looking anglerfish. Inspired by nature, plants, trees, flowers, and planets also appear. The inanimate objects at number 105 include U.F.Os, emojis, guns, and cable cars.
Buy the best plushies
If the Top 10 stuffed animals and the Top 30 stuffed animals didn’t satisfy you, and you want to buy a truly special stuffed animal, you’ve come to the right place!
From the oddly shaped food plushies and celestial plushies to tiny woodland critters and giant mammals, in this section, we’ve collected some of the very best alternatives for buying unique stuffed animals!
One final entry: the shrimp plushie!
The final bonus entry on this list is the shrimp plushie, with 0.00002% of the total amount of targeted searches. That translates to roughly 10 monthly searches. The “top 150” might make for a nice round number, but why would we only leave out the little guys?
This concludes our list of the “Top 151” most popular stuffed animals. Because we love supporting the little guys, we’ll wrap up by saying: if you truly want to be unique, buy a shrimp plushie!
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Content creator Pim Razenberg is an experienced traveler who’s been roaming the planet for many years. After a stint in the Dutch film industry, he lived and worked in Romania, the United Kingdom, and Thailand. Pim is currently working in the Netherlands, bringing creative new projects to fruition and writing a novel detailing his journeys across the world.