The Joyfay Giant Teddy ($109, Amazon) is described as “6½feet” and appears in pictures as an adorably chubby furry friend for young and old alike: “offers more huggability than your average bear!” declares the product description.
But upon receipt, buyers report, the toy is not quite what they expected. It is, as promised, “6½ feet”. As spotted by Twitter user cooltonedcutie, it’s mostly limbs.
“I was expecting a the bear to be huge because it’s 6.5 ft right?” writes “Amazon Customer”. “No, all of its height is from its legs and the legs are longer than its upper body.”
But others say the freakish furry is just adorable — a position its creators at Joyfay are quick to concur with.
“We first began selling giant teddy bears because we noticed a large spike in demand around Valentine’s Day for these items on Google Trends,” writes Nikola Matic, who cofounded the company while completing a PhD program at Case Western Reserve University. “At this time, this was a present almost exclusively given to girlfriends and wives. It was often given from boyfriends or husbands that traveled frequently or were deployed overseas as a sort of surrogate boyfriend. As such, the proportions of the teddy bear were closer to an adult humans than to tiny teddy bears.”
Adds Matic:
In the years since, a demand has grown for these giant teddy bears as a gift for children, for birthdays, and even at Christmas. With that change in demand, there was a desire for the bears to have the proportions of a smaller teddy bear. While unexpected, our company met this change in demand and changed the dimensions of our Giant Teddy Bears in the summer of 2016. We have continued to have very favorable reviews, and always provide excellent customer service to those that have had issues.
As a small company, we were disturbed when a tweet went viral, leading many people and webpages to attack our company. Many pictures were taken from angles that emphasized the legs, rather than showing the true dimensions. We would urge you and others reading about it to come to www.joyfay.com and see authentic pictures of the item.
And she says I’m hard to shop for.
Joyfay Giant Teddy Bear [Amazon]