Exclusive | Sonny Angel fever soars as Gen Z collectors clamor for popular ‘emotional support’ dolls
How old is too old to play with dolls?
For smitten Gen Z fans of the 3-inch tall Sonny Angel — a Japanese mini-figure stealing the hearts of young adults everywhere — the limit does not exist.
Young New Yorkers nutty for the compact cherubs have been known to endure lengthy lines for the latest drops — on Wednesday, miniature monger Emma Morrison, 20, waited patiently outside toy emporium an.mé in the East Village for a first crack at the doll’s new dinosaur series.
“I get that waiting an hour and a half is kind of silly, but it was fun,” Morrison told The Post.
The proud parent of 13 Sonny Angels could have just ordered the figures online, but, she explained, “There’s something about sharing an experience with other people.”
Surprisingly, the fun-sized $10 figurines are not a new invention. But 20 years on, the phenomenon appears to have reached a fever pitch.
Ana Ruiz, 23, is the proud owner of 30 different Angels — neatly arranged on her New York City bedroom shelf in rainbow order — that she said bring her “so much joy.”
“The kids these days want to grow up so fast, and I think my generation or age range is just grasping on to any shred of childhood fun that we have left,” Ruiz, a content creator who also works in market research, told The Post, calling the frenzy “infectious.”
Angel aficionado Kayla Holt, 20, estimates her collection is “easily worth over $500.”
“I used to think they were silly, but after they became more popular on social media, I couldn’t help myself and had to see what the hype was about,” Holt, a content creator and disability support worker from Melbourne, told The Post in an email.
Jackie Bonheim, director of marketing for Dreams USA, which distributes Sonny Angels, said the dolls have surged in popularity specifically within the last two years, a trend that has resulted in global shortages as the company struggles to keep up with rampant demand.
On TikTok — the driving force behind the crowd-pleasing cuties’ recent stardom, according to Marissa Silva, the editor-in-chief at the Toy Insider — a quick search yields thousands of videos in which users eagerly unbox their latest finds, or boast their behemoth collections.
On Facebook, regional groups for buying, selling and swapping have swelled to hundreds if not thousands of members. There are city-specific meet-ups, Discord servers and Instagram pages dedicated to the pantsless poppets — referred to as “little boyfriends” on a recent “Saturday Night Live” episode, while others have described them as “emotional support” dolls.
On second-hand sites like eBay, unboxed, limited-edition Angels can cost a pretty penny, with some ringing in at hundreds of dollars for just one. Silva noted collectability and scarcity are part of the allure — despite the company’s frustrations with the overpriced resale market.
“I hate seeing people pay way too much money for something online, so it can be frustrating,” Bonheim said, noting the company’s attempts to deter resellers by limiting the quantity of Angels purchased online.
Sonny Angels now populate workstations, desks or bookshelves, and some variations of the figures, known as “hippers,” can be attached to smartphones and laptops.
Some super-fans can even purchase a cherub-adorned phone case from Casetify, which just released its limited edition Sonny Angel collection last week.
Drawn in by the dolls’ cuteness factor, fans are hooked by the blind box aspect of purchasing a Sonny Angel, taking a gamble on which figure they’ll find inside the mystery packaging.
In the toy industry, that’s what’s called “the reveal.”
“The reveal is like when you step out on stage and the curtain parts and you go, ‘Voila!’ and and everybody sees who it is,” Lynn Rosenblum, an assistant professor of toy design and toy historian at Otis College of Art & Design, told The Post, likening it to gum ball machines or the surprise prizes from Cracker Jacks.
“If you have a toy and it has a feature that you can use a reveal, then you have really got something.”
“Think about it: if you collect antique cars, you can’t drag them with you,” said Rosenblum.
“But a little small item like that, it’s portable, so you can take it and you can show it to people, or you can have it hang out at your desk at work or you can take it on a bike ride,” she said.
And, unlike antique cars, there’s always room on the shelf — and in the budget — for one more.
Part of the fun, said collector Ruiz, is “hunting for that one that you really want.”
Since buying her first Sonny Angel last fall, she has joined online groups to trade and purchase the figures her collection is lacking, while scouring the internet to find ultra-rare ones that might not be manufactured anymore.
A typical weekend afternoon for the New Yorker and her friends often entails purchasing multiple Sonny Angel blind boxes and opening them together in Ruiz’s apartment, where they’ll bargain and swap the pocket-sized celestial beings.
“If somebody’s got your dream one, you’ll be like, ‘I’ll give you two of mine for yours,'” she said.
“It’s just like that one thing that kind of makes you feel a little bit like a kid.”