The Mana Merchandise section I made years ago has been missing a long time now, after various updates to the site and changes on the backend mixed things around. I actually don’t know if I even have those files anymore.

So I figured with Legend of Mana on the way, it might be interesting to do some posts about some Legend of Mana merchandise.

For whatever reason, when Legend of Mana was released, Square went wild with merchandising for the game. There are pieces of Legend of Mana merchandise you probably would never expect to exist, unless you’re a really hardcore Mana fan.

 

The first, and most obvious, piece of Merch I’d like to mention are the Rabite Plush dolls. These were released in 1999 along with Legend of Mana, but the two smaller plushies were also released alongside the World of Mana games (Dawn and Children). If they come with hanging tags, wrapped around their tails with elastic, the Legend of Mana and World of Mana logos make it obvious which batch they come from. However, you can always tell the difference between the two by checking their “tush tags”. The Legend of Mana ones have a copyright date of 1999 and only mention Square while the newer ones have no date and mention Square-Enix. These Rabites come in a normal and a “sleep” variety.

These small Rabites have become quite rare over the years, but still pop up on auction sites from time to time. Surprisingly, there still seem to be a lot of the small Legend of Mana plushies out in the world. I happen to have a handful of them for myself, maybe 2 each of the originals, and 2 each of the newer ones. How much would these go for? It was a good time when they’d go for maybe $15 each, but that time has obviously passed. I think if you hold out though, you can still get them for around $30 dollars. That is, if they even show up at auction.

What is actually very rare, however, is the cushion sized Rabite plush. This big ol’ plush sports sleeping eyes, and sadly has never found its way into my collection. The image of it here comes from the “Making of Mana” book sold around the same time. It actually details all the different Legend of Mana merchandise (well most of it…) that exists.

I’m still kicking myself for not paying $99 for one of these way back in the day (mid 2000s), because they’ve basically disappeared from existence since then. I did have the opportunity to bid on one of these bad boys back in 2014, but I lost the auction as I was driving around in the Rocky Mountains at the time and had no opportunity to up my bid. Also, it went for around 400 dollars, if I remember correctly, and had tea stains all over it. That’s how rare this thing is, people will shell out the big bucks for a ruined one. How much would I pay for one of these? Well, contact me if you want to make a deal.

So that’s that for the first post in this series. Do you have any Rabite plushies? There are quite a few new ones that were released after the Secret of Mana remake came out. I have to say, though, I really prefer the way these older plushies look compared to the new ones. Something about them feels less “corporate” to me, if that makes any sense!

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