You could probably make a similar case for Puyo's cutesy characters and the Puyo themselves: another friend of mine once brought Puyo gummies over from Japan, I'd expect a lot of that sort of thing.Īnd then of course you have the fact that Puyo Puyo got its greatest push in arcades, Puyo Tsu being toe to toe with Street Fighter II in Japanese arcades back in the 90s.

Like, I don't know how many people in Japan watch Spongebob, but he's still a highly marketable figure. Cartoon characters, for example, make their way to Japan and will get some airtime, but will often make the biggest impact as say, a fashion statement. Now from what I've gathered from a Japanese friend of mine, brands in Japan often rise to popularity through merchandise and general iconography. So it's a bit of a headscratcher, at first glance, how a series could underperform pretty drastically compared to Sonic and still apparently be bigger across these demographics. Nothing to scoff at, but it's a far cry from the sales of Sega's obvious darling Sonic the Hedgehog. Meanwhile, Puyo Puyo has only about 25 million in sales, which includes Puyo Puyo Quest on mobile I believe - which puts it at Sega's second best selling series.

'it doesn't necessarily correlate to game sales but, according to Hosoyamada, Puyo Puyo has bigger brand awareness across more demographics/generations in Japan than any other Sega brand-like, overwhelmingly so, in the same ballpark as Sanrio, Nintendo, etc ' At risk of sounding like I'm trying to shift the conversation toward my MW (bear with me, it's just an example I'm particularly familiar with), one thing that particularly brought this to my attention was an interview with Puyo Puyo's producer Mizuki Hosoyamada: In any case, I wanted to use this part as a springboard for something else I've been thinking about - mainly how for some series, sales aren't telling the full picture.

I believe that thinking outside the box is a good thing to, but I find it's usually the most comfortable just a little bit outside that box rather than all the way on the other side of the room, yknow? That was a really good writeup Pacack, and I think it's a good sort of reality check.

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