BoujeeKidsThere is a short list of products that have earned the word iconic. The Jellycat Bashful Bunny, the soft, long-eared comforter that sits at roughly £20 to £30 depending on size, is on it. That price puts it well above a supermarket plush and well below anything you would call an heirloom on purchase. The question is whether a £25 soft toy can possibly justify itself. We think it can, with caveats, and the reasons are part practical and part something harder to put a price on.
Jellycat · London brand, founded 1999
Bashful Bunny
The floppy seated bunny that made Jellycat’s name: dense, fine plush, weighted drooping limbs and embroidered features, built to survive bedtime and beyond. Honest about its washing limits, and quietly underpinned by a resale market most owners never need.
Check price on AmazonThe honest question
A £25 rabbit sounds absurd next to a £4 one from the same shelf at the supermarket. On paper they do the same job: they are soft, they are cuddled, they get dropped in puddles. The difference only shows over time. The cheap toy is disposable. It pills, it flattens, it gets thrown out. The Bashful Bunny is the one that survives, the one a child names, the one that cannot be replaced by an identical model because by then it is not the model the child loves, it is the specific bunny. That is the gap between expensive and disposable, and it is the whole argument for this category.
Why the brand exists
Jellycat is a London company, founded in 1999, and it built its reputation on one thing: a particular quality of softness that competitors have spent two decades trying to match. We would not claim no one has come close, that is unprovable, but the brand’s signature plush remains the reference point others are measured against. Bashful, the floppy seated bunny with the drooping ears, is the design that made the name. It is not loud, licensed, or covered in slogans. It is just very well made, and that restraint is part of why it ages well in a child’s room rather than dating.
The build, in real terms
What you are paying for is genuinely in the construction, not just the label.
- A dense, fine plush that holds its texture through years of handling rather than matting after a few washes.
- Weighted, floppy limbs that sit and droop convincingly, the detail small hands respond to.
- Embroidered features instead of glued-on plastic eyes, which matters for safety and for longevity.
- Care that is realistic for a loved object: most Bashful Bunnies are surface washable with cool water, and some newer releases carry a 30 degree machine-wash label. Always check the sewn-in label, never tumble dry, and it comes back to life with a soft brush and a hairdryer.
What it is not
This is where honesty matters. It is not indestructible, and it is not machine washable across the board, so treat any blanket “chuck it in the wash” advice with suspicion and read the label. The counterfeit problem is real: fakes are rife on third-party marketplaces and use inferior fibre that pills within weeks, so buy from John Lewis, Selfridges, or an authorised seller. And it is not a toy your child needs if they already have a shelf of them. One that gets loved beats six that gather dust. If you are buying purely to chase resale value, that is the wrong mindset entirely.
Does it pay for itself
Here is the part people underestimate. Jellycat retires designs constantly, and retirement turns an ordinary £25 toy into a collector item. Discontinued colourways routinely change hands on Vinted, eBay and Depop for several times their original price, with condition and attached tags driving the number. The frenzy around a retired shade is real, and frankly a little absurd: a beige rabbit is a beige rabbit until it sells out, at which point it is a small asset. We would not buy one as an investment, the market is unpredictable and illiquid. But the resale floor keeps the practical cost of ownership low, and the durability means it rarely comes to that anyway. The real return is years of use and one object that becomes irreplaceable.
The verdict
For a child, this is the soft toy worth spending on: built to survive bedtime and beyond, honest about its washing limits, and quietly underpinned by a resale market most owners never need to use. The collector hysteria is a sideshow. Buy it for the durability and the bond, not the spreadsheet. How we score
Where to buy
Buy from John Lewis, Selfridges, or an authorised Amazon seller, never an unknown third-party listing. The Medium (31cm) is the classic: large enough to mean something, small enough for small hands to carry. The Small (18cm) is the gifting sweet spot on a tighter budget, and the Large (36cm) is the birthday gift that gets photographed. For a retired colourway, the secondary market is the only route, so factor in condition and tags.
Score: 9.1/10. How we score.