As many of you are aware, GANZ has not announced any new Webkinz plush pets in the past few months. The last new plush was the beautifully crafted Narwhal. We can now officially state that there will be no new Webkinz plush in 2019 and that the Narwhal will be the final plush toy of the “first generation” of Webkinz plush.
Our reasons for making this decision are three-fold:
- For any toy to be produced at an appropriate price, a minimum number need to be produced. Our retail orders for our new styles, even great ones like the Narwhal, had fallen below this minimum.
- Our attempts to move plush sales online through the eStore and Amazon did not meet our goals.
- After 14 years and over 500 unique pets, this generation of the toy line had run its course.
The reality is that at times every toy brand needs to take a break, evolve and reinvent. Many of the biggest toy brands in the world – My Little Pony, Transformers, Strawberry Shortcake – have had times where there were no toys on retail shelves.
Will this impact Webkinz.com? Not at all. One of the big developments in the past few years is the acceptance of online purchasing. When we launched Ganz eStore in 2008, many players didn’t understand the idea of buying “purely” virtual pets. Now we’re all used to buying virtual items and we’re happy to say eStore use has been going up! Many of our new eStore virtual pets have been well received and are among our best looking pets ever! As we’ve said elsewhere, GANZ is committed to Webkinz.com and with our desktop version coming soon, the future of the game is strong.
Will Webkinz plush be back? Definitely. GANZ was born as a plush toy company and lovable plush will always be near to our hearts. We have had many discussions about future products and how best to bring those products to market. We can’t say anything more about this at this time, but we do hope to have some more announcements later in the year.
In the meantime, you can still find Webkinz plush at Ganz eStore, and through other online retailers. All available plush are “while quantities last,” so if there is a specific pet you’d like, you will want to order it soon.
We’ve all had great experiences with our Webkinz plush and have those favorites that we feel closest to. While we may be taking a break from making new styles, our incredible range of amazing plush toys will forever be a core part of Webkinz World.
GANZ
I hope you bring plush be back this year?
This concerns me…
Do you guys think that the gen. 2 plushes will be extremely different to our nostalgic gen. 1s, or , even if they will be even coming back!
As December rolls in… will we be receiving any news about the plush pets?
I been asking also. No response back. It is scaring me.
December is ending, and I’ve been wondering if an update will be given to us soon – maybe in early 2020 if at all. What worries me is that “this generation of the toy line had run its course”, suggesting that the new “generation” will have differences compared to what we are used to. Saying that this break was to “evolve and reinvent” really strengthens this statement, but I’m hoping that new Webkinz will stick to the current or a past design rather than becoming something completely different. A design tweak here and there is understandable and expected, but a whole new plush design would be unlike what we’re used to and I’m not sure how the community would react to that. I really hope this new generation does Ganz well because they deserve it – I’m just hoping they don’t go too far away from their current plush design.
Y’all should make another orange cat and a badger and an ocelot. That would be awesome!
Webkinz are great, and I understand your reasoning. I hope you start selling them again!
I hope someday the garnet Rover will have a plush! It’s so adorable!!
well i hope that when you launch “gen 2″ it gets webkinz popular again! i would love to see them being sold everywhere like they used to
Yeah, I do too. Webkinz is my favorite game at the moment lol
Same here! Right now there are only 2 drugstores in the area that sell any at all and one store has a few fish the other has a few of the Li’l Kinz animals.
same here! at my store they are running out :(
Same, I am hoping gen 2 becomes super super popular! Webkinz has been my favourite online game since it first launched, I’ve been obsessed. The plush and games are so much fun.
Same:) lol
I wish you could make a few more narwhals cause I was never able to get one and they are my favorite sea creature!!!!!
Just buy one on Ebay! :D
oh ya!!!
I am an Elementary Classroom Teacher and for more than 10 years I have adopted an new plush pet every year for my students. They each take turns bringing our classroom adopted pet home for sleepovers. They log in and play, they write in our little friend’s journal about all of his/her adventures on the long awaited sleep over! In fact this year my students wrote and published a book through a publishing company called “And Then it Happened” Adventures with Bamboo our adopted PLUSH Panda. As you can see I’m immensely disappointed to read this news. Each year our plush pets became a true member of our classroom who would go everywhere with us. We would even blog about our activities and include our pet in our photos. I truly hope you will reconsider this decision, or at least bring back your reinvented plush pets as soon as possible.
You’ll still be able to find relatively inexpensive, brand new Webkinz plushes on websites like Amazon or eBay!
Yes, tmuller! Please keep up with this project! There are many plush with code still available on Amazon! Also keep an I out a yard sales, Salvation Army/Goodwill stores. Also keep an eye out at local flower shops. There is one in town that still has a small variety of them to go with gift bouquets and baskets.