Thumbnail picture by @yuugifoom^[5]

About

The Fumo Fumo Plush Series, commonly referred to online as fumos and occasionally spelled fumofumo, is a line of plush dolls of characters from the Touhou Project universe, manufactured by the Japanese merchandise company Gift. Fumos are popular on the internet and receive much representation among the Touhou fandom.

History

The design of fumos originated from a series of doujin works by the Japanese circle ANGELTYPE, depicting the character Sakuya Izayoi with doglike features and a chibi appearance^[1]. In 2008, Gift partnered with ANGELTYPE to produce plush dolls in a similar style.

Gift released the first Fumo Fumo plushes, Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame, in August 2008 (shown below)^[2]. The name "Fumo Fumo" is derived from the Japanese onomatopoeia "mofu mofu" meant to express the feeling of softness, fumos being designed to be soft to the touch. That year, the plush dolls sold out throughout Japan.^[3]

The Fumo Fumo collection expanded and gained in popularity, offering variants for numerous Touhou characters and also offering larger variants of its most popular characters called Deka Fumos. Another variant, depicting the original "Inu Sakuya" design, was introduced in May 2009^[1].

Fumos are known to be difficult to acquire outside of Japan because Gift does not ship internationally. As such, customers outside of Japan are required to resort to a proxy service or to purchase from retailers at varying and usually much larger rates.

Online Presence

In addition to being a popular toy in Japan, fumos are popular online, most notably on Twitter and 4chan's /jp/ Otaku Culture board, where fumo owners enjoy sharing pictures and montages of theirs.

Fumo Fumo fan Twitter and YouTube accounts, such as Yumemey, feature short sketch comedy videos with the dolls. Yumemey launched their Twitter^[4] account in 2015 and their YouTube account on December 18th, 2018. The following day, Yumemey published their first video, which received more than 20,000 views in less than two years (shown below, left).

On September 9th, 2019, the account posted its most popular video as of August 2020. The post received more than 89,000 views (shown below, right).

Other viral videos also featured animations of the dolls. For example, on February 12th, 2020, PerlDrop shared the video "Fumo Funk." The video received more than 36,000 views in less than one year (shown below, left).

Additionally, buying guides, reviews and unboxing videos also grew in popularity on YouTube. One of the most popular, YouTuber Vampirepineapple's "Touhou FumoFumo Purchase Guide," which they published on February 14th, 2019, received more than 14,000 views in less than two years (example below, right.

Fan Art

Search Interest

External References