The Animal Crossing: New Horizons themed Build-A-Bear teddy bears are now available; featuring Isabelle and Tom Nook.
As previously reported, the exact characters being used were not announced. This led to speculation on who would be selected, along with other Build-A-Bear features that may be used; such as alternative clothes, accessories, or sound-chips.
Fans entered virtual queues on the store page, before it was finally revealed the bears would be Isabelle and Tom Nook. Both bears are available in two varieties; one that can play the game’s main theme, and one that plays five of the various sound effects of emotes and the character’s dialogue.
It should be noted the Animal Crossing villager language is actually each letter or character being said quickly. This means Animal Crossing villagers in Japanese games say something different to those in English or other version of the game. While clips can be listened to on the Build-A-Bear website, attempting to decipher what is exactly being said is inconclusive at this time.
Each bear is 15 inches tall, and is available now for $51.00 USD (limit to one per customer, gift wrapping and bear “birth certificate” available).
At this time of writing, Isabelle is trending on Twitter, but not for the reason Nintendo may be hoping for. Some fans are annoyed at the small selection of characters on offer, or that none of the villagers themselves were chosen at this time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and in the replies of Build-A-Bear’s own tweet]. This may have also been exacerbated by the online queue time of over an hour.
However, at least one Twitter user had high hopes. “Originally the Pokémon Build-A-Bear collection was JUST Pikachu, they included more and more Pokémon as time went by. (One at a time since 2016),” notes @realcheesyboi. “People freaking out over the Animal Crossing collab only being Tom Nook and Isabelle need to calm down. More will come in due time.”
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available on Nintendo Switch. In case you missed it, you can find our review here (we recommend it!)
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