Disney’s Tsum Tsum line gets beyond stackable plushies

Mary Yanni September 13, 2014

1 minute read

When Disney brought its popular Japanese smartphone puzzle game Tsum Tsum to the United States earlier this summer, it was a bit of an experiment. The stuffed characters based on the game’s design showed up in Disney’s online store and a few physical stores, but not in great numbers.

Disney Store

Soon, Disney was rushing to restock its shelves, the New York Times reported, quoting one consumer products consultant saying this could “probably, yes” be the next Beanie Baby trend.

The iOS version of the game has been downloaded about 800,000 times, according to the mobile app search engine Xyo. That’s a modest number compared to 9.5 million downloads of Disney’s Frozen Free Fall game.

So the game might not be taking off the way it did in Japan, but that’s not stopping Disney from trying to leverage the cuteness — and oh, my, there is a lot of cuteness — for merchandising well beyond the stackable stuffed creatures it started with.

You can now put the Tsum Tsum characters on a variety of items in the personalization shop, including mouse pads, iPad sleeves, t-shirts, mugs and phone cases. You can get to all of them from the Tsum Tsum shop at the Disney Store online. Here’s a look at some of the items introduced this week: