SPECIAL FEATURES

Swibco owner and president, John Pouleson, was nice enough to talk to me about some of the exciting things happening in Puffkinland.

One of the things he wanted to let collectors know was how difficult it may be to find a set of Halloween Puffkins; Ding the bat, Hazel the witch, Gourdy the pumpkin, and Red the devil. "The demand for the four Halloween styles greatly exceeds the supply," stated Mr. Pouleson. "Some retailers are telling us that they have already presold all of their sets using sign up sheets and have been asking to order more. The order time was a one month window and no more of these styles are being produced. These are going to be hot Puffkins!" He also went on to recommend signing up for your Christmas ones now because he predicts the same thing will happen with HoHo, Jingles, and Flurry. These limited edition Halloween Puffkins have specially designed tags with 'Limited Edition' printed in them as well as the image of a bat.

Gourdy the pumpkin does not look like he does in the pictures you may have seen. Mr. Pouleson explained that they did not have Gourdy available when the pictures for the Halloween flyer were taken and he had to be mocked up with a glued on face. Gourdy actually has shiny black triangular eyes and a sewn on smiley mouth.

The Christmas styles also will be sporting special tags with a design on the inside. (More on this a little closer to Christmas.)

Of course I was curious about new releases and retirements. Mr. Pouleson was pretty secretive but did say, "Just wait until you see what we have coming in September!" He stated there will be 6 styles released and he also plans on doing a retirement all in the month of September. It will most likely follow closely the way the last announcements were done on the Swibco website on July 15th. He was not sure how many Puffkins may be heading off into retirement yet and would only say, "Just wait and see." As we were speaking of retirements he wanted to let everyone know that the Swibco warehouses are out of Toby. They will soon be out of Toby and Armour keyrings as well.

We may be seeing some new product lines from Swibco in the future. Swibco is exploring getting back into the full size plush market. They had a line of plush that began in 1983. These too had the heart shaped tags on them and were called "Somebody Loves You." Mr. Pouleson says that Swibco is also working on tag protectors for Puffkins that will also fit other bean bag animals and may debut as early as October.

I asked Mr. Pouleson, "Is there any one thing that you are especially excited about with the Puffkins?" He replied, "I am really excited with the acceptance and growth of the Puffkin line and also the growing number of Puffkins' collectors."

For anyone wondering who Mr. Pouleson's favorite Puffkin might be, I have the answer. "I always liked Henrietta with her purple color but my new favorite is this guy here," he said picking up Omar the orangutan. "He's a screamer!" said Pouleson who explained that he really likes to add color to the Puffkin line and that he requested a bright orange orangutan.

Mr. Pouleson signed some things for me when I visited Swibco in April and I was very pleased to get a few more things autographed. These are the prize items in my Puffkin collection along with some pictures of him that I took and some pictures of the two of us together.

I had a wonderful time at the Gift Show and learned alot!

Members of the Puffkins Collectors' Club will be able to read a more extensive interview with Mr. Pouleson in the Fall edition of the Collectors' News newsletter in September. The complete interview will appear in the December/January edition of Rosie Wells' Collectors' Bulletin magazine.