Doom developer and Alice: Madness Returns creator American McGee have just teamed up with ’90s goth icon Emily’s inventor Rob Reger to turn the character into the perfect fixture for my creepy bedroom, and their limited edition collaboration is live after being revealed this April. Now I’m sitting next to my Emily the Strange plush and wishing that she had thoughts, and that I could hear them. It almost never happens that a teenage girl wearing all black gets turned into a very fluffy stuffed rabbit, so I’d like to get her take on it.
Strange things happen when an unstoppable goth force has met an immovable goth object – and every girl I used to be is screaming. This collaboration between McGee and Reger is nearly 30 years in the making; the pair originally met in 1998, “at the exact same time I was bringing my Alice to life,” says McGee on Twitter, in reference to his first haunted Alice in Wonderland spinoff game from 2000. “That makes Alice and Emily creative twins!” But this Emily the Strange plush from McGee’s fancy stuffed rabbit brand Plushie Dreadfuls marks the creative pair’s first crossover, and it’s dreadfully lovely.
Down the rabbit hole
This particular plush and accessories are available for $49 direct from Plushie Dreadfuls. While you may see some (convincing) knock-offs at the likes of Amazon, the only way to get official Plushie Dreadful toys is via the official store.
There are 2,000 total numbered plushies, plus an additional 200 “collector editions” that include a card autographed by McGee and Reger, and they come with the usual Plushie Dreadfuls accoutrements, like a tote bag and a pen. I was proud to walk around the woods this week with my Emily the Strange tote that shows Emily the bunny spraypainting the words “I Love Cats” with an anarchist A in it for good measure, letting all the nearby crows know where my loyalties lie. The matching pen dispenses black, buttery ink, and it’s topped with a detailed rubber mold of Emily in her rabbit suit. This special Plushie Dreadfuls set also comes with an Emily the Strange coin purse, which is hairy like her plush’s rabbit hood and could hold a few essentials – money, keys, and fake vampire teeth for just in case.
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But the real princess here is the plush, which is as detailed and silky as all of Plushie Dreadfuls’ products (Emily is my third one). Reger’s original character is a subtle young woman. All of the 13-year-old’s power comes from her black hole eyes – otherwise, she usually just wears a plain dress, solid black tights, and a sensible pair of sneakers. Her canonical gaggle of four cats are the true fashionistas. Mystery has a trim collar with a star swinging from the middle. Neechee flicks a stylishly striped tail, scraggly Sabbath decorates his hind with a bandaid, and Miles is missing an eye.
Emily’s Plushie Dreadfuls reincarnation, however, adds McGee’s characteristic whimsy to Emily’s bold, original design. There’s a broken red heart stitched to the middle of her chest and the red-and-black stripes decorating her arms and legs have the impressive quality of looking smeared onto her fur, with the berry red bleeding onto what would have been her wrists if McGee and Reger hadn’t transformed her into a cute rabbit. Her floppy black ears hint at the onyx-dark hair underneath her stitched-on hood, and a cat-and-crossbones embroidered on their apple-colored interior serve as foreboding reminders of her real friends. Those damn cats.
A dark scar curves around her face, mimicking the button eyes and busted ears of McGee’s other plushes. They were originally made in the image of Alice’s white rabbit plush in McGee’s adventure games; the girl held tightly to the deformed doll until the orderlies in the asylum forced her to let go.
I get the sense that Emily the Strange’s plushie would never let that happen. The numbered card I received with her teaches me some of her important slumber party rules: “Think for Yourself, Do it Yourself, Be Yourself. Or, better yet, be all you can’t be.” Like a scarred bunny rabbit, maybe?
Having once been a strange little girl, I used to worry Emily and Alice in Wonderland were the only souls on the planet to share my angst. But as a grown-up, I think my new Emily the Strange Plushie Dreadfuls plush is a reminder that strangeness can never hurt, and it never dies – it simply turns into a good story, or a timeless outfit made up of all-black.
Speaking of throwbacks, this fan made an incredible Lego Final Fantasy set, and now I’m hoping it becomes a real model.
