Snack notes

Looking after your Snackles plush toys

Snackles plush toys that get handled get grubby. Here is what works, and specifically what to avoid with the long-pile characters and the printed accessories.

Spot-clean, do not machine wash

A damp cloth with a little mild soap, worked gently in the direction of the pile, then left to dry away from direct heat. That is the whole method and it handles almost everything.

A machine wash does two kinds of damage. The long-pile characters — Lucas, Robbie, the mandrill, the Series 1 yeti — mat permanently, and matted pile cannot be brushed back out. The printed snack accessories crease and can crack along the fold lines. Neither is repairable.

Drying and brushing

Let a damp plush dry at room temperature, turning it occasionally so the stuffing does not settle to one side. A radiator or a hairdryer will stiffen the fibres. Once dry, a soft brush — a clean pet slicker works — lifts the pile back up on the shaggy characters. Do not brush the printed accessories.

Sunlight is the slow problem

A shelf by a window will fade a pink or red plush noticeably within a year, and the printed snack artwork fades faster than the fabric around it. If you display rather than play, keep the shelf out of direct sun. This is the single biggest factor in how a collection looks after five years.

Storing and keeping the hangtags

Hangtags carry the bio, star sign and birthdate on the named characters, and they are the only place that information exists. If you are storing rather than displaying, leave the tag attached and keep the plush loose in a breathable box rather than vacuum-compressed — compression flattens the pile and the shape does not always recover.

Washing without ruining the print

The faces and the snack packets on every Snackle are printed, not embroidered, which decides how these plush toys should be cleaned. Surface washing is the safe route: a cloth, cool water, a little mild detergent, worked on the fabric rather than the print, then air drying away from heat.

A machine wash will usually survive one trip in a pillowcase on a cold, gentle cycle, and will not survive many. What fails first is not the stitching but the ink at the edges of the printed face, which goes soft and loses its line. Once that has happened there is no fixing it.

Never tumble dry and never use a radiator. Heat is what shrinks the backing behind a printed panel, and a shrunk panel pulls the face out of shape permanently. Air drying a 16-inch plush takes two days and is worth the wait.

Keeping the pile and the shape

The short-pile fabric used across the collection flattens where a toy is held, which is most visible on the 8-inch characters because there is less fabric to spread the wear. A soft brush in one direction lifts it back. Do not brush across the printed face.

Large plush toys arrive compressed from shipping. A 16-inch Series 2 plush needs about a day out of the box to recover its shape; the over-filled Super-Sized characters come out round because the fill density does not compress the same way. If a large Snackle looks lopsided on arrival, give it a day before deciding it is faulty.

The sewn-in snack accessory is the sturdiest part of the toy, but the stitch line where it joins the paws is the place to check after heavy use. It is also the easiest repair on a plush — a few stitches in matching thread, from the inside of the paw.

Clips, tags and long-term storage

The 3.5-inch keychains use a metal clip and a loop stitched through the body rather than to a seam, because the attachment is always what fails first on a plush keychain. Check the loop rather than the clip; a stretched loop is the early warning.

Keep the hangtags. The bio, hobby, star sign and birthdate printed on them are not reproduced anywhere else, and for a collector a Snackle without its tag has lost the written half of the character. A clip-on bag or an envelope per wave is enough.

For long storage, a breathable cotton bag beats plastic. Sealed plastic traps moisture against the pile and the print, and the first thing you notice when a collection comes out of a sealed box is the smell rather than the fade.

Care by range, and where the awkward ones are

Not every shelf is equally easy to look after. The long-pile characters in Series 1 and Series 3 mat the fastest, because the fibre is longer and the 14-inch plush gets handled most. Series 2 is the shelf with the printed snack accessory, and a Hershey's or Mentos panel is the part you keep away from water; the same applies to the Super-Sized Snackle pairings such as Pringles and Froot Loops. Snackles Disney has the most face detail, so a favorite Stitch or Minnie is worth brushing rather than rubbing.

The small size items are the exception. A Snackles small size mini or a clip-on charm lives on a bag, gets dirty faster than anything on a display shelf, and has a moulded snack rather than a printed one, so it tolerates a damp cloth better. The seasonal characters are the ones to be careful with for a different reason: the runs were short, they are not reissued, and a faded Halloween character cannot be replaced. Store those out of sunlight and keep the hangtag with the origin story comic in a drawer.

None of this is complicated once you know which part of the plush toy is delicate. Every Snackles plush is made to the same super soft, squeezable pattern, so a routine that works for one character works for the whole collection: spot-clean, air-dry, brush the pile, keep the accessory dry. Done that way, a cute 8-inch plush survives years of hugs and still reads as the adorable, playful friend it was designed to be, which is the point of collecting them in the first place. Fans who keep the story comic tags find the collection ages better than they expected.