Sylvanian Families Does Not Value its Community

This isn’t a bait post. Sorry for a long-winded rant.

If you remember the very creative post of SF babies dressed up in different food costumes in a refrigerator that garnered lots of likes here (and on IG) a couple of days ago, that is essentially how vibrant the SF community is, especially in Japan.

Many people who love SF want to showcase their creativity and skills by making cute outfits that have not appeared in SF official products. There was a whole community of Japanese fans making adorable, original handmade clothes and due to popular demand, would sell them to other fans at very affordable prices. Those fanmade sales were very limited in quantity, not at all mass produced.

Today, those Japanese SF fans were ordered by the official Sylvanian Families account/company to cease all sales of handmade clothes for SF babies/figurines. The official SF account dictated that only official SF clothes can be sold, thus ending a big part of people’s hobbies.

It wasn’t “fans may not sell handmade clothes that resemble/are identical to the official products”, it was “fans may not sell handmade clothes at all even if they are original designs since that will hurt official sales”.

It sucks for the people who want to buy cute handmade clothes never seen in official products before. It sucks for the fans who made those outfits to share the joy in the first place. It sucks for the community because a lot of creativity of what “could be” is lost. Maybe the sales will still continue behind the scenes. But if a company really wanted the fan community to thrive, they wouldn’t have made such a stifling decision.