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Alyssa RosenbergColumnist|AddFollowDecember 28, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST(Michelle Kondrich/The Washington Post) Listen5 minShareComment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave
First, it was narwhals. Then, llamas. Now, axolotls are coming for America’s children.
The salamanders are the hottest creature in kids’ departments this winter. Children can dress plush axolotls from Build-A-Bear Workshop in holiday finery, or decorate their binders with bedazzled axolotl stickers from Pipsticks. Wee worriers might be soothed by a microwaveable axolotl heating pad or the pink light of an axolotl lamp. When Girl Scouts hit the streets to sell cookies in January, they’ll be cheered on by an axolotl mascot.
The story of how axolotls went from clammy and obscure to cute and ubiquitous is a lesson in the creation of contemporary trends. It’s also a caution: A market for tchotchkes featuring a critically endangered animal doesn’t necessarily support keeping the species alive in the wild.
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Axolotls were primed to go viral. Their gills look fluffy from afar, making them easy to translate into plush. They have a winning expression, with wide-spaced eyes and perpetual small smiles. As one of the few creatures able to regenerate limbs and internal organs, they’re weird enough to appeal to kids enchanted by the oddities of the natural world. That they’re at risk only adds to the appeal.
Brand axolotl has been bubbling for a couple of decades. The critters appear to have made their pop culture debut in 1999, when Pokémon introduced something like one as a pocket monster named Wooper. Another similar Pokémon helped give rise to the first of many memes involving the creature. Toothless, an axolotl-inspired dragon, flapped onto the big screen in 2010’s “How to Train Your Dragon.” And the amphibians feature in the cryptocurrency game “Axie Infinity” that took off in the Philippines during the covid-19 pandemic.
But it was when the mega-popular world-building game “Minecraft” introduced axolotls in 2021 that interest in the creatures spiked.
Success breeds success: This year, axolotls beat out sea otters, zebras, sugar gliders, goats and pikas in the Girl Scout mascot vote, netting 38 percent of ballots.
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The rise of the axolotl, and its challenge to llamas and narwhals, is also a product of the toy and craft industry’s constant search for the next cute thing to sell to kids and their parents.
Take Pipsticks, the sticker subscription service and retailer. It needs to generate 45 new sticker sheets a month, says Mo Vazquez, the company’s founder. “If there is a strange animal request, I usually want to do it immediately because we can make an animal fit into any theme,” she told me. Customers requested axolotls through the company’s Facebook page. (Axolotls have also racked up 3.7 billion views on TikTok.) The frilled-gilled ones made their Pipsticks debut for Valentine’s Day, all hearts and dreamy smiles.
Adults are driving the demand for axolotls, too — and for toys in general. At the Toy Fair in September, the Toy Association’s Kristin Morency Goldman highlighted research the group commissioned that suggests 89 percent of adults plan to buy toys for other grown-ups this holiday season. Goldman also said a staggering 53 percent of American men planned to buy toys for themselves.
Over at Build-A-Bear Workshop, which offers several plush axolotls and outfits for them, chief executive Sharon Price John notes a similar trend. Grown-up customers gravitate toward “trendy animals” as a form of self-expression. Fondness for axolotls — be they in jammies or tutus — can signal an affinity for gaming, environmental concerns or simply a love of all things cute. Many Pipsticks customers are adults, too.
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Selling consumers small and big on axolotls has been easy. Channeling this enthusiasm toward conservation is harder, as the “Minecraft”-induced craze illustrated.
The platform has added at-risk animals and ecosystems to the game before, including bees, pandas and mangroves. And it partners with BBC Earth on environmental education. But the virtual axolotl introduction had unintended consequences in the real world. People rushed to buy axolotls as pets and then animal rescues were swamped with unwanted ones.
A spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts noted that having an exotic animal as a mascot is an opportunity to educate girls about the challenges such pets pose. Rather than buying a live salamander, families might be better off with a symbolic axolotl adoption that contributes to conservation efforts.
Keeping axolotls alive in the wild requires both money and creativity. Wild axolotls’ wetland home around Mexico City has undergone radical changes. The expanding metropolis, changes to farming and the arrival of predatory nonnative fish saw the population plummet to just 35 per square kilometer a decade ago, down from thousands in the 1990s. Now researchers are trying to build demand for the products of farming practices that maintain the creatures’ native habitat, and to breed and release axolotls into the newly welcoming environment.
But conservationists hoping to seize axolotls’ moment in the spotlight to build long-term support had better hurry. From their monitoring of social media trends, Vazquez and John predict capybaras will be the next big thing. So when kids hanker after pajamas and pencils and plushies featuring the giant South American rodents in 2024, parents should remember: Pairing these with a real investment in biodiversity is the best gift of all.
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First, it was narwhals. Then, llamas. Now, axolotls are coming for America’s children.
The salamanders are the hottest creature in kids’ departments this winter. Children can dress plush axolotls from Build-A-Bear Workshop in holiday finery, or decorate their binders with bedazzled axolotl stickers from Pipsticks. Wee worriers might be soothed by a microwaveable axolotl heating pad or the pink light of an axolotl lamp. When Girl Scouts hit the streets to sell cookies in January, they’ll be cheered on by an axolotl mascot.
The story of how axolotls went from clammy and obscure to cute and ubiquitous is a lesson in the creation of contemporary trends. It’s also a caution: A market for tchotchkes featuring a critically endangered animal doesn’t necessarily support keeping the species alive in the wild.
Axolotls were primed to go viral. Their gills look fluffy from afar, making them easy to translate into plush. They have a winning expression, with wide-spaced eyes and perpetual small smiles. As one of the few creatures able to regenerate limbs and internal organs, they’re weird enough to appeal to kids enchanted by the oddities of the natural world. That they’re at risk only adds to the appeal.
Brand axolotl has been bubbling for a couple of decades. The critters appear to have made their pop culture debut in 1999, when Pokémon introduced something like one as a pocket monster named Wooper. Another similar Pokémon helped give rise to the first of many memes involving the creature. Toothless, an axolotl-inspired dragon, flapped onto the big screen in 2010’s “How to Train Your Dragon.” And the amphibians feature in the cryptocurrency game “Axie Infinity” that took off in the Philippines during the covid-19 pandemic.
But it was when the mega-popular world-building game “Minecraft” introduced axolotls in 2021 that interest in the creatures spiked.
Success breeds success: This year, axolotls beat out sea otters, zebras, sugar gliders, goats and pikas in the Girl Scout mascot vote, netting 38 percent of ballots.
The rise of the axolotl, and its challenge to llamas and narwhals, is also a product of the toy and craft industry’s constant search for the next cute thing to sell to kids and their parents.
Take Pipsticks, the sticker subscription service and retailer. It needs to generate 45 new sticker sheets a month, says Mo Vazquez, the company’s founder. “If there is a strange animal request, I usually want to do it immediately because we can make an animal fit into any theme,” she told me. Customers requested axolotls through the company’s Facebook page. (Axolotls have also racked up 3.7 billion views on TikTok.) The frilled-gilled ones made their Pipsticks debut for Valentine’s Day, all hearts and dreamy smiles.
Adults are driving the demand for axolotls, too — and for toys in general. At the Toy Fair in September, the Toy Association’s Kristin Morency Goldman highlighted research the group commissioned that suggests 89 percent of adults plan to buy toys for other grown-ups this holiday season. Goldman also said a staggering 53 percent of American men planned to buy toys for themselves.
Over at Build-A-Bear Workshop, which offers several plush axolotls and outfits for them, chief executive Sharon Price John notes a similar trend. Grown-up customers gravitate toward “trendy animals” as a form of self-expression. Fondness for axolotls — be they in jammies or tutus — can signal an affinity for gaming, environmental concerns or simply a love of all things cute. Many Pipsticks customers are adults, too.
Selling consumers small and big on axolotls has been easy. Channeling this enthusiasm toward conservation is harder, as the “Minecraft”-induced craze illustrated.
The platform has added at-risk animals and ecosystems to the game before, including bees, pandas and mangroves. And it partners with BBC Earth on environmental education. But the virtual axolotl introduction had unintended consequences in the real world. People rushed to buy axolotls as pets and then animal rescues were swamped with unwanted ones.
A spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts noted that having an exotic animal as a mascot is an opportunity to educate girls about the challenges such pets pose. Rather than buying a live salamander, families might be better off with a symbolic axolotl adoption that contributes to conservation efforts.
Keeping axolotls alive in the wild requires both money and creativity. Wild axolotls’ wetland home around Mexico City has undergone radical changes. The expanding metropolis, changes to farming and the arrival of predatory nonnative fish saw the population plummet to just 35 per square kilometer a decade ago, down from thousands in the 1990s. Now researchers are trying to build demand for the products of farming practices that maintain the creatures’ native habitat, and to breed and release axolotls into the newly welcoming environment.
But conservationists hoping to seize axolotls’ moment in the spotlight to build long-term support had better hurry. From their monitoring of social media trends, Vazquez and John predict capybaras will be the next big thing. So when kids hanker after pajamas and pencils and plushies featuring the giant South American rodents in 2024, parents should remember: Pairing these with a real investment in biodiversity is the best gift of all.
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