(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- In Adi Sharpe’s spare bedroom in Athens, Georgia, a display case houses more than 100 tiny baby figurines known as Sonny Angels. Another shelf is filled with glow-in-the-dark Smiskis, green, mischievous-looking bald beings.
“Those are my little guys that can get me through the day,” says the 26-year-old veterinary hospital worker, whose videos about the characters have gone viral on TikTok.
it’s his prized possession ???? #smiski #smiskicollection #smiskiunboxing #smiskiblindbox #smiskihaul
That was just what Toru Soeya, the Japanese president of toy and lifestyle goods company Dreams Inc., had in mind when he came up with the figures. Soeya wanted the dolls to help young women relieve daily stress. Their tiny size makes them easy to carry around for emotional support. A Smiski can also be easily placed against walls or shelves, like a “mysterious fairy that watches over you,” according to its slogan, while Sonny Angels are “little boyfriends.”
“The underlying theme is about making people smile and feel healed, and that’s what I think about when designing,” says Akiyo Yamashita, manager of the planning and development division at Dreams.
Although Dreams has been churning out cute characters in Japan since it was founded in 1996, Sonny Angels and Smiskis, which retail for $10 to $12, started taking over social media in the US and other countries around 2022. US sales of the company’s figures were about three to four times higher last year than in 2022. They almost doubled in size again in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, with similar trends occurring in other countries, according to the company. Restocks of Sonny Angels online sell out within minutes.
Sonny Angels reached US TV screens in May when a Saturday Night Live sketch featured a character played by Dua Lipa who has a vast collection of the toys; Bowen Yang played a Sonny Angel. Although many Dreams employees in Japan had never heard of SNL, the company says, traffic on its website the day after the sketch aired climbed to six times its average. Dreams says it got a similar bump in online attention after model Bella Hadid posted a photo of her Sonny Angels on Instagram last year.
Owners of Sonny Angels and Smiskis express their love for the characters with tattoos and nail art, create clothes for them and attend meetups to trade figurines. The toys can also be found at stores such as Urban Outfitters, while rare versions, such as a mouselike character named Robby Angel, are resold on the Japanese online marketplace Mercari or eBay for hundreds of dollars.
The popularity of the characters is further evidence of a shift in the way that "cuteness" is perceived outside of Japan and other Asian countries. Erica Kanesaka, an assistant professor at Emory University specializing in Asian American literature, says that social media has helped the globalization of cute culture, alongside evolving conceptions of what being grown-up means.
“Gen Z and Millennials are now rejecting rigid expectations of what adulthood must look like,” says Kanesaka, who also studies kawaii, or cute, culture. “Putting a Sonny Angel on your desk at work is one small way of saying that cuteness and adulthood can coexist, that you don’t have to be a child to enjoy cute things.”
The packaging of Sonny Angels and Smiskis helps amplify their popularity on social media, according to Dreams. Without knowing what’s inside, social media users peel open the so-called blind boxes and reveal their contents in unboxing videos.
Sonny Angel Unboxing ???????????? #ASMR #ASMRSounds #SonnyAngel
“The lucky draw aspect of not knowing what you’re going to get is really compatible with TikTok,” says Hiroshi Sukegawa, manager of the marketing division at Dreams.
The Sonny Angels and Smiskis craze is also colliding with another phenomenon: visiting Japan. Dreams says it now receives messages from foreign tourists almost every day asking where they can buy the figures, with some showing up at company headquarters. The company has increased the number of stores that sell its products in airports or in tourist hot spots such as Tokyo’s Asakusa district, home to a famous temple.
Sharpe says the social media craze has made it harder to buy Sonny Angels online, but she’s not giving up on them because there are so many she still wants. One that she’s been chasing, part of a collaboration with designer Donna Wilson, is a rare doll dressed like a peanut.
“My dreams would be complete if I had the peanut,” Sharpe says.
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