Sad Nuggie popping up at Eaton Centre with plans for permanent store

The viral Sad Nuggie plushies have popped up at the Eaton Centre in Toronto with their very own temporary store, but there are possibilities that Sad Nuggie could be at the shopping centre to stay.

It may seem perplexing, but Sad Nuggie is part of the plushie phenomenon, selling (sorry, adopting out) plushies that are intended to look like chicken nuggets.

But not just any chicken nuggets: a la Jellycat, Squishmallow and other types of viral plushies, the Sad Nuggie chicken nugget plushies come in endless varieties (or “species”) like wizards, axolotls, penguins, unicorns, dinosaurs, bunnies, cats, foxes, sharks and spiders.

The @shopsadnuggie account on Instagram associated with the specific Eaton Centre pop-up has been going majorly viral in its own right, with posts accumulating thousands of likes and hundreds of comments on Instagram.

“CF offered us this spot for one year right after our very successful holiday pop up at their other property CF Masonville Mall in London Ontario,” Rowan Carter, one of Sad Nuggies owners and the content creator behind the @shopsadnuggie channel, tells YourCityWithIN.com.

“A future permanent store would be even more immersive with more natural habitats built for all of our species of nuggies. Right now we were able to create a nuggie jungle with a large canopy of trees that is the centerpiece to our eaton centre “adoption centre” and a closet for our Dress Up Nuggies.”

While that already might sound quite over the top and experiential for what is essentially an elaborate toy store that only sells one type of item, the team behind the Sad Nuggie pop-up at the Eaton Centre has even bigger plans for what could possibly become a permanent location at the shopping centre.

“In our Strathroy location, we have 7,000 square feet of experiential retail with themed displays for all of our nuggies, and a nuggie medical centre where nuggies can get checkups from our nuggie doctors, and can get repaired if they become damaged,” says Carter.

“We would like to be able to offer more of this at the eaton centre in the future in a larger location.”

Sad Nuggie is currently popping up at the Eaton Centre for one year starting this month, but it’s possible that Sad Nuggie may open a permanent Eaton Centre location in Toronto in the future.