An Animal Crossing: New Horizons fan shares an image of a weird LEGO knock-off, featuring Raymond, and strangely, many unrelated elements.
An Animal Crossing: New Horizons fan discovered an odd Raymond LEGO-like block set in a store and is sharing their find with the world. Fans have been clamoring for official Animal Crossing: New Horizons LEGO sets, but this probably isn’t what they had in mind.
As one of the most popular villagers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it’s not all too surprising to find Raymond becoming the subject of a knock-off set of LEGO-like building bricks. However, while Raymond is the focus, the set clearly takes influences from many different things, presenting a very strange combination of themes.
Reddit user durrhurpaddurr shared an image of the find with the Animal Crossing subreddit, which they say was discovered by their girlfriend. The image shows the cover of a box of builder blocks, similar to LEGOs, called “Brick Maker,” rated six years and up. Everything beyond that point gets weird, though. The image shows a figure of Raymond, with the face and clothing looking pretty accurate, but with long humanoid legs. Raymond is holding what looks like an electrified light saber, standing next to a small fish pond that wouldn’t look out of place on a farm in Stardew Valley.
The box is entitled “Welcome The Animal CrossinC” with the tagline stating “Explore the unknown world: Undersea Fantasy Journey.” Obviously, this isn’t an official Animal Crossing or LEGO product, but fans are delighting in how terrible a blend of elements the knock-off is. The manufacturer hasn’t worked very hard to obfuscate the origins of the product’s design, as while the title is seemingly purposefully misspelled, the logo and designs are clearly based off of New Horizons.
Knock-off bootleg products like these are surprisingly common, and there’s often simply too many in production for the rights owners to keep up with all of them. Pokemon, for example, is an extremely guarded series, and Nintendo and The Pokemon Company fairly regularly issue takedowns and copyright strikes against websites and uploaders that share the original media or even fan-based spin-offs. Considering Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ extreme popularity, it’s not a surprise that knock-offs would exist, but putting the time and money into shutting down the operation behind it would likely take more effort than it’s worth.
Whether or not the manufacturer of this toy is eventually found or shut down, chances are this is far from the last bootleg fans will discover. Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ boom during the pandemic has secured its place in pop culture, and with such a huge fanbase, other companies are bound to try and profit off of it, even if it’s not legal.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now on Nintendo Switch.