Disclaimer: This teapot will not make your tea taste like slime or otherwise imbue it with evil energies.
However you feel about Dragon Quest, one of Japan’s most dearly beloved and historied role-playing video games, it’s hard to deny its graphical appeal. The characters and monsters have an innate nostalgic charm for a reason: they’re designed by living legend Akira Toriyama, the man behind such comic hits as Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball.
The concept for the simple Slime, the weakest foe in the Dragon Quest franchise, was thought up by series creator Yuji Horii. Toriyama drew the pile of goop in Horii’s imagination as a gloopy teardrop shape with a stunning smile, and the rest is history. Nowadays the Slime is thought of as Dragon Quest‘s Pikachu equivalent, or maybe their answer to Moogles; a cute icon that also serves as shorthand for the series behind it.
Know what happens to cute icons that serve as visual shorthand for popular series? They get turned into merchandise. Lots and lots of merchandise. More merchandise than is, perhaps, necessary. The slime is so cute and so distinctive that it can turn pretty much anything into a piece of Dragon Quest memorabilia — which brings us to Square Enix e-shop’s newest Slime-shaped product, the Japanese-style kyusu teapot.
Kyusu teapots are small teapots intended for brewing green tea. With a distinctive handle jutting out of one side and a large spout, it offers plenty of room to allow the tea leaves to brew — and kyusu pots come equipped with a built-in strainer to facilitate this.
These cute little pots can come in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colors, and now you can even purchase a KyuSlime teapot crafted in the image of a cheerful video game blob monster.
The KyuSlime Slime-shaped Kyusu Teapot (Blue) costs 2,750 yen (US$25.35) including tax and can be pre-ordered now from Square Enix’s online shop (here) and also through Amazon (here). These steamy little slimes won’t roll out until May 23 of this year, but you’ll want to act fast before they’re all gone! Who knows when we’ll next get a chance to purchase Slime-shaped appliances?
Source: Square Enix eStore via Japaaan Magazine
Images: Amazon/スクウェア・エニックス(SQUARE ENIX)
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