Froggy Chair

The Froggy Chair is one of those products that was introduced in the original version of Doubutsu no Mori on the Nintendo 64 and was carried through to Animal Crossing on the GameCube, Wild World on the DS, New Leaf on the 3DS, and New Horizons on the Switch. It garnered worldwide attention in November 2019 when a fan posted a meme of Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War’s ultimate wish being a Froggy Chair. It was the perfect storm of the popularity of the Avengers movie, the release of New Horizons, and a population locked down from COVID-19. Pretty soon, other memes popped up, mostly poking lighthearted fun at the silliness, wholesomeness, and cheapness of the Froggy Chair in the Game.

As happens when memes go viral, pretty soon Etsy was filled with people selling “fan art”. Do a search on Etsy for “Froggy Chair” and you’ll see miniature Froggy Chair models, socks, pins, neon lamps, ornaments, keychains, patches, stickers, and lots of other Froggy Chair-inspired products. To Nintendo’s credit, they could technically send their lawyers after these Etsy shops for violating their trademark but they appear to be letting these shops be.

On the other hand, I do notice that there aren’t life-size Froggy chairs anywhere, including the usual places that counterfeiters go to sell things. The only explanation I can think of is that Nintendo IS taking down sellers who try to manufacture these. If that’s the case, it’s smart on their part to protect their trademark, but one only wonders the mint they would have made if they partnered with a respected manufacturer to make these while it was viral.