#and deeper

ok first of all i've tested some stuff and I was able to transfer a lot of the merch spreadsheet to Cryptpad for potential future sharing, however the image embeds broke and it doesn't allow line break within cells the same way Google Sheets does sooooooo idk if that's going to be The Solution i go with. Half the images are placeholders in the "full" version of the sheet I've shared images/video of previously and the eventual online archive can have the photos while this is just to track your own shit, but idk, i want the photos in my personal tracker so i'll think about it some

nexttttttt i did a little bit of an overhaul of the existing posts because wow some info was out of date

promotion exclusives post changes: updated the info for the lootcrate tie-in (availability), sonic toys (all magnet variants), the crew memento statue (it was only sent in pr as a secondary thing it turns out), and the character cutout standees (they were at book fairs). removed some additional angle photos to make room for photos of new additions added sections for the scholastic event staff shirt, crew hoodie, crew bomber jacket, weird pin game thing, and doll display

con exclusives post changes: updated info for the con pins (buttons and han cholo), cleaned up the ordering and descriptions of the posters added a little information about the activity booklet already included in the promotion post, the full list of conventions i'm aware of in the reblog, and a link to the post's reblog with additional information (the con post was split into a main post and a reblog, so i could edit the base post but it wouldn't matter because it wouldn't change in the reblog. i switched all my links to be for the base post and then added on a link to the reblog with a list of what it contained at the end for if anyone wants to look at those things since it's not actual merch (stuff like the day pass and additional photos of the collectors cards already included in the base post, etc).

base post: updated info for the hot topic shirts now i've tracked the last one down (still need info on the buttons!), updated the bioworld section for the now-defunct things, clarified the costumes (previously listed disguise child + adult separately from party city child but they were probably the same thing), and broke down the promotional material section into publicly available + privately available + not available added information for several things from the promo post (maybe one or two from the con too) that didn't make their way into the main post, added organized directory at the bottom of the post to ALL merch posts that have even vaguely informational content so it's easy to find everything now

unknown merch post: added whatever the fuck that black t-shirt is and the lanyard

also yeah just want to flag the bioworld clothing has been discontinued, but the lunchbox is still available, so if you want it, buy it right the fuck now lol

alright commentaryyyyyyyy i have commentary and thoughts and weird additional info that doesn't fit anywhere in particular

con pins: bruh. ok. han cholo had sdcc exclusive pins right. very exclusive, they only even released a promotional photo of One of the pins, the others are just mockup art and i've only seen one reseller photo of all of them. HOWEVER. han cholo also said they had nycc exclusive pins. they werent??? they just fully werent??? it was the five-pin chibi set. they were all available online and even restocked and DISCOUNTED. why the fuck did they call those con exclusive. they aren't. you're liars. thanks for being one of the last stalwarts of merch, though. you weirdos.

Also i had no idea how fucking weird the release of han cholo merch was. randomly - sometimes in back-to-back months, and sometimes three months later, and sometimes even more - they would just release like. two more pins. one time they released pins and didn't even post about it, they were just suddenly available on the website when i went to the next wayback machine snapshot.

alsoooooooooo dear god is their coloring inconsistent. i noticed this in the three pins with catra i have, she's a different color in each, but i thought hey maybe these had some curing differences and it's a QA issue. no han cholo straight up uploads promotional photos - what should be the best pieces and photos possible - with multiple catra pins in them and all of them have different skintones. why is catra's skintone in particular so variable between pins??? i think bow might have this issue too but considering he only had one pin in the main collection it's harder to tell, the one irl photo of the sdcc pins ive seen has his skintone way darker. i havent seen any variety in the darkness of netossa's skintone between different batches of her pin, though (not that i have more than like, three photos to compare from), so i think it's not a difference in how the color happens to cure that day but rather an actual difference in the base color used for each pin which i cannot FATHOM. why would it not be the same mix for every pin. maybe it is a curing difference but wtf is going onnnnnn 😭

also clare pointed this out at the time in the long post so i've never mentioned it but why tf did han cholo release that "hero" pin of s5 she-ra kneeling. who drew that. that art has never appeared anywhere else on the planet. did someone on the show draw that. did someone at han cholo do it??? where did it come from and why was it one of the very last things they released?? i have similar questions about the s5 catra chibi pin. clare found the og chibis were supposed to be drawn by ray and kiki i think? i dont remember where that was sourced? but did ray then redraw it for s5 catra or did han cholo photoshop that themselves lol. cuz i'll be honest s5 catra does look worse than s1 but that might just be because it's a retrofit on old art that wasn't balanced towards the new design and the fact the skintone is once again completely different. also her fangy is missing. i mean the fact she's smiling now makes me soooooooo happy. but fangy

sourcing stuff that was available at cons is hard because im convinced almost all of she-ra con merch is from 2019 considering 2020 cons got cancelled, but there are a few listings online that name stuff appearing at cons in 2018, which would make sense as pre-promo for release in november 2018, but it's so rare and limited im not convinced those sellers aren't misremembering years or just making typos. This is the list of cons i have found merch claiming to have appeared at or confirmed she-ra was present (i wrote this here and then decided to clean it up and add it to the con reblog):

SDCC: 2018, 2019 - panels and an extensive amount of merch that has been documented. i have not tracked down photos of the booths here yet. confirmed booths: mattel, han cholo NYCC: 2018, 2019 - panels and an extensive amount of merch that has been documented. i have not tracked down any booths yet WonderCon: 2019 - merch, no idea about booths/panels Power-Con: 2019 - merch, no idea about booths/panels Lightbox Expo: 2019 - panels and merch Anime Expo: 2019 - only trace i can find is the shopping bag, so probably just adverts? BookExpo: 2019 - scholastic employees had she-ra branded shirts and character standees, i don't know that anything was actually given out BEC: 2019 - i'm convinced they're just on the child's day pass for no reason, i can find fucking nothing on this convention. their website doesn't even work! Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC): 2019 (ND did a panel, but i have no trace of merch)

I think they could have had a presence at more book-related events via Scholastic and toy-related events via Mattel, but those were probably more industry-focused ones, hence the lack of promo swag. Like I don't know of anything being given out at BookExpo, but i suspect the scholastic materials (stickers, etc) were there, and i have a photo of the character standees being there, but i KNOW those were somewhere else too, because Commuter Industries have photos of them at a completely different room surrounded by she-ra cosplayers, but i have no idea which con that was.

atp i really want to watch vlogs or skim blogs from attendees at these cons to see if i can source more, but the problem is i have no idea if those people/cameras actually went to any she-ra booths because they might not be fans and certainly won't document every single booth at the con. so i might go through a ton and find nothing. sigh. who knows. might have to start doing this, tho. if only to find that damn pin game again

ok hang on we're detouring on fucking cons again. i'm spinning off

i just found that soyun park (spop visual development artist) hosted a panel (Living the Dream – Visual Development Journeys At Dreamworks) at LightBox Expo 2019 AND the Dreamworks Careers socials have posted about having an official presence there off and on over the years (i see posts from 2020, 2023, 2025, and 2026, could be more). i bet this is where the she-ra sticker with the careers social plugs came from!! probably either 2019 or 2021 since the 2020 con could have had stuff ordered that was given out in later years after 2020 went virtual. i found a photo that might include it and made a whole post on it because this is long enough

also i just want to say <- i switched tabs and started researching cons. i have no fucking idea what i was going to say. my ritalin hasn't kicked in yet. alright. moving the fuck on!!! (yes this is what my brain is like)

promotion post:

sonic toys: ok so i'm convinced a magnet might be missing based on who has multiple variants and the backgrounds. there are three sets of backgrounds (Plumeria, Bright Moon, and the Fright Zone), and the characters are distributed weirdly:

Plumeria background: Adora, Bow, Catra (standing) Fright Zone background: Catra (striking), Hordak, Shadow Weaver Bright Moon background: Glimmer, She-ra (solo), She-ra & Swift Wind, Swift Wind (solo)

kay so why is catra the only one to have two magnets (except she-ra & swift wind, ig, since they have solo magnets and a duo one). why is glimmer shunted off to bright moon while her besties are in plumeria. why is glimmer in her neutral standing pose instead of her main bouncy pose when everyone else is in their main poses (+ additional for catra and she-ra+swift wind). why are there FIVE bright moon magnets and three for the others

I have a theory there could potentially be a second glimmer (in her main key art) with the plumeria background and a scorpia magnet with the fright zone bg so everything is more even, but there is absolutely no trace of that online. however, one of the above magnets i listed there's no traces of online except for the one that i have, so there are potentially more variants undocumented. the alternative is that it was planned and scrapped before production and that's why it's such a weird lineup lol. i think the latter is actually more likely than the former but who knows, if you have a magnet not listed above pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee tell me. my only other thought to explain it is if it's a "three characters per bg" rule since technically the whispering woods set does just have glimmer, she-ra, and swift wind, but it's still weird that they used glimmer's standing art that appears NOWHERE else except the back of her trading card. helloooooooooo. hello. is this thing on. WHY IS MERCH FOR THIS SHOW SO WEIRD

ok for like three years i thought the statue was just sent out to influencers. turns out no, dreamworks made that as a crew memento and they had them sitting around the office. no idea if it was available to all crew, they ordered a bunch but only gave a few out to crew, etc, because i've never actually seen it in crew member's possession (ND had that whole she-ra shrine in his house and there was a big og she-ra statue there and the reboot dolls but not the show statuette, some of the crew posted a photo excitedly posing with a fan's handmade statue of basically the same thing in a bit bigger scale that was sent to the office and there was no mention/sign of an official version in those posts), but some were meant to be given out at dreamworks and those ones did not have the letter insert. i confirmed this because i got one that was still sealed and broke the tape seal on the styrofoam myself (even still have the external "this is not a toy" plastic bag). so some were sent out and some were internal. dreamworks did (essentially) an employee freebies grab day earlier this year and that's what led to a bunch of these statues going up for sale recently, all of which were marked by their sellers as crew mementos. idk maybe these were just meant for pr and the extras got thrown in with that event but i think these statues were meant for both, regardless of what the final distribution ended up being. i'm going to re-estimate the total of these to be ~50 with that knowledge. i think i've seen 10-20 of these go for sale over the years and those numbers feel like they check out because anyone with this who didn't want to keep it forever WOULD sell it online because it obviously has collector's value, unlike stuff like random event shirts, and some people will have kept, lost, or broken theirs

"ensemble crew including Grey Chen" <- im fucking faceblind don't ask me to identify anyone in this photo except the uploader im sorry ok i just cant but i wanted another photo of the crew hoodie and was at the image limit, so combining that with documenting the she-ra statue via the photo of the crew in front of it was just practical. if you do know who those people are i will add it happily but please dont lie to me lol i wont be able to tell

I have no fucking clue whats going on with that pin game. i think you threw things at the peg. the only proof of its existence i have is three screenshots someone else took from a con vlog an unknown person uploaded, so i don't even know what con it was at. if anyone has any info on this share it please thanks!!!

unknown merch post:

i stillll don't know where that fucking lanyard was worn, i'm 100% convinced it was staff at either a dreamworks or netflix event/booth, but finding old photos from cons of those booths is hard. i don't know how to even go about doing it but i really want to because i suspect some of the unknown shirts were also worn there, like the scholastic shirt i have sourced and the black shirt that is mislabeled as crew promo. so if you personally have or know links to photos of staff at she-ra-related booths at any cons, pls lmk!

ok for the black shirt. listen. i do have photos of crew members wearing white and black t-shirts with she-ra on them. however they're all fan made or otherwise identified. i have no clue why there are SO. MANY. SHIRTS of she-ra riding swift wind that have no source. they're all so similar and yet different. every single one of them is by a different manufacturer. why are there so many fucking manufacturers involved in this show's merch. my assumption is kind of that if one entity is ordering things for a specific purpose, they would use one manufacturer if possible, right? like it makes sense her universe produces their clothes and then has to private label their earrings from bioworld because it's a different kind of product. but if dreamworks is ordering hoodies, bombers, and tshirts for their staff, i would think they would use the same manufacturer for all of them if they could. so now i can confirm the crew hoodie was made by bella + canvas, i would think any shirts dreamworks ordered internally would be as well (idk if they do bombers, it a different kind of product so i wouldn't be shocked if they were from someone else. hang on post cancelled im researching brb-

okay neither bella + canvas nor next level apparel make bomber jackets and i Highly Doubt i'll ever get my hands on one of the writer's room jackets to confirm what brand they actually are

god ok i got this far and then doubled back and made two posts and edited shit and did so much and added some above but. i tracked something down and i started my dive into she-ra merch Jul 20th, 2023 and that feels insane to me because it feels like it has been sooooo much longer. like i would have told you i'd been tracking this for at least 4 years if you asked but no, turns out it's just under 3. which. puts how much money i've spent in that time into perspective but anyway!!

idk for me, i think i got a little more emotional about the merch with the show being delisted (as might be expected lol) and i do have two or three things i really don't need just because i wanted them documented and i was going insane about how undocumented (erased) stuff for this show was, but like... it's so important to me. it's so important there's phsyical stuff that can't be erased. this show completely changed the course of my last five years (half a decade) and i have a cabinet full of things made by corporations and fans to show that was real. for every thing i don't really need, is it weird to say im grateful for five other things i have? In the long run, my handful of pins dont matter and i don't even like them all that much, but for years they were proof that people - fans and backward-ass execs - cared about this thing that meant so much to me enough to put their financial backing behind it

i never cared about merch until she-ra. i'm trying to look around my room and the only thing i have merch for other than she-ra is XANA (a VIP gift bag & lanyard, and a shirt) and PVRIS (tour shirt). i mean i have a lot of physical music but that's practical you know lol there's no practical reason to have the inflatable sonic sword and the light up target play sword. but i do. because the show mattered.

idk maybe im just extremely emo because i got the crew hoodie last night (best hoodie i own btw it's actually really nice) and i have something i know a member of crew physically held but-

*stands on tippy toes*

He's like "yeah- ME!" 😡🤬😡😤😠😤

Summary: Oikawa arranges a three-on-three practice match featuring Bo and Kuroo. But he happens to be a little off his game today, leading to stupid mistakes and consequences. Also: since when was Bo so perceptive?

Words: 3,200

__________________________________________________

“I guess this is the place,” said Oikawa as he, Iwaizumi, Matsukawa, and Hanamaki stood in front of a municipal gym somewhere in Tokyo. How did they end up here?

It was summer after their graduation and, somehow, Oikawa had started texting Daichi about what their plans were for the future. Oikawa had mentioned that he would’ve liked to have some sort of practice match with a bunch of strong players separate from regular training, but outside of his three third-year buddies from Aoba Johsai and the third-years from Karasuno (who were largely unavailable at the moment), he didn’t really have any connections to people like that. That’s when Daichi brought up Karasuno’s summer training camp where they had been continuously ‘harassed’ by Nekoma and Fukurodani (specifically their highly spirited Captains). He told the setter he would ask them if they were interested in a match with the former Seijoh players and that he would get back to him with the answer. Long story sort: they were very interested. So Oikawa received their contact info from Daichi, and they set a place and time for the match.

Oikawa really hoped this practice would somehow give him answers to help him break through this wall he recently found himself stuck behind. He would never tell anyone, but Oikawa was terrified that he would never reach the potential of a national team level. After all, in all of middle school and high school, his team never was able to beat Ushiwaka and his protégé ended up defeating his team at the end of his high school career. He was beginning to doubt himself again. And he hated himself for it.  

“This should be interesting. One last hurrah before the Seijoh third-years go their separate ways, huh?” mussed Iwaizumi. “And against Bokuto. He’s one of the top 5 spikers in the nation, right?”

“Yeah, I gotta say, I’m really looking forward to this!” said Hanamaki.

“Well, we’d have to make it inside the gym first,” Matsukawa drawled.

“Right you are, Matsun! Well, then! Shall we, fellas?” Oikawa flourished and without further comment, they entered the gymnasium to meet the two former captains.

___________________________________________________

“Yoooo!~” said Kuroo.

“Hey, hey, hey! You guys must be the Seijoh formers, yeah?” Bokuto said, flamboyantly. The four stood, only slightly dumbfounded by the energetic welcome before Oikawa replied.

“That we are! It’s wonderful to meet the two of you! Thank you so much for indulging us!” As per usual for the setter, each word was carefully selected and soon, everyone was exchanging greetings and introductions.

“Alright, so how do you guys wanna split the teams up?” Kuroo asked a little later.

“Well, all together, we have three wing spikers, two middle blockers, and one setter. But, Makki here could just as well play the role of setter under the circumstances. I think Bokuto and Iwaizumi should be on opposing teams and Matsun and Kuroo would oppose each other as well,” Oikawa reasoned.

“Alright then: how about Bo, Oikawa, and Matsukawa on one team, and Iwaizumi, Hanamaki, and myself on the other. Sound good?” Kuroo asked and everyone nodded and murmured their approval.

____________________________________________________

About ten minutes later, everyone was finishing their warmups and Bokuto’s attention was drawn to Oikawa who was practicing his serves; his eyes closed, head bowed, and gripping the ball as though it were something truly precious. He was oozing with intense focus and, frankly, Bokuto just couldn’t resist. He was so serious. He just had to.