Squishmallow
The marshmallow-soft plush empire that outlasted every plush trend. Adults 18+ are the primary buyers, rare characters resell for hundreds over retail, and the McDonald's Happy Meal drop made it official: Squishmallows are infrastructure now.
THE SQUISHMALLOW CRAZE
Squishmallows are the marshmallow-soft, named-character plushies that took over bedrooms, dorm rooms, and adult collector shelves — and unlike every other plush trend of the 2020s, they refused to die. While Jellycat, Labubu, Smiski, and Sonny Angel all had their viral moment, Squishmallows kept compounding: 40% of parent company Jazwares' revenue, billions in sales, a McDonald's Happy Meal tie-in for the June 2026 World Cup window, and a secondary market where rare characters routinely resell for $200+ above retail.
WHY IT'S HUGE
THE VIBE
The Squishmallow vibe is permission. Permission to buy a plush at 27, permission to display 40 of them on a couch you paid for, permission to admit a soft round frog is doing more for your nervous system than your meditation app. The 2026 cultural moment is the official McDonald's Happy Meal collaboration — a cross-generational handshake that turned them from "trending plush" into "infrastructure." The collector community has its drama (rare-grail price gouging, scalper tension), but the floor under it is real: this is the soft-empire that calmed a generation through pandemic, recession, and the menty b era. If Jellycat is whimsical Britain, Squishmallow is American mass-comfort — and it isn't going anywhere.