OVERVIEW: Nici's Ayumi Be You

Secret in 12" and 15" sizes

I first discovered Ayumi Be You on Tumblr in August 2014. They're four cute characters made by Nici, a German stuffed animal company. The Ayumi website says: "The name AYUMI originates from Japanese and means “she does it her way”. With their glittering eyes, the AYUMIs can look deep into your soul. They listen to you and are always by your side." Each character has a name in English with the translation in Japanese often written beneath it in brackets.

Like many Nici lines, Ayumis come in 3 sizes: 20cm (8"), 30cm (12") and 38cm (15"). After searching on ebay, I saw a US seller with them on Amazon, so I ordered my first, the 12" Secret. I got her and liked her, but I was disappointed she didn't have as round a face as the promo images. That's when I did some photo searching and found an image taken in a shop where you could see all three sizes. It's the 15" ones that are used for the promo images, so I ordered a 15" Secret and from there on out, I've stuck with that size.

Hope and Fun

Secret seems like the obvious one I'd like, being black, but it was Fun I saw on Tumblr first. Still, after poring over all the pictures, I decided on Hope for my next adoption and ordered her at the same time as the 15" Secret. They arrived and I was smitten with that size. Fun was ordered and arrived a little over a week later, while Love was on her way from Germany. The seller had to special order her from me, since she was out of stock. Love became my second favorite after awhile. Initially, I was disappointed with her, because her promo pictures make her look very pink, but in reality, she's a rather dusty pink. But her big golden eyes are very endearing.

Each Ayumi has a mane of fur with a patch of fur in a highlight color. The same highlight color is at the tips of their furry tails. Each one also sports a bow in her mane. their eyes are large and glittery.

Secret and Love

Having gotten all four, it was awhile before I thought of Ayumis again. However, I had found a Tumblr that posted Ayumi pictures and I believe it was through that that I learned about the addition of two new characters to the line: Talent and Harmony. In July 2015, I added both to my collection.

I had been wondering what colors Nici would do next. I thought purple was an obvious choice or maybe blue or a soft yellow. But they surprised me.

Harmony and Talent

Harmony is gray with black highlights and a pink bow, making her instant pals with Secret. Talent is a lovely rich orange with white highlights, so she resembles both Fun and Love a little bit. She also emulates Secret's style and has the same bow. I adore both of these girls. Harmony is a big fave of mine, but Talent is just gorgeous, too, because she has the widest-set eyes of the six and that makes her very appealing somehow.

I looked for these two from my same Amazon seller, but they weren't in stock, so I picked a seller on ebay. The service was nice, but arrival took a rather long time. Afterwards, I bought another Nici toy (a yeti) and he, too, took quite awhile, so I switched to another seller for my next purchase (a porcupine) and he arrived quickly.

The disappointing Magic

The next Ayumi I was pretty excited about. Nici released an art image of a new character named Magic. She looked mint green (much lighter than Fun) and had big glowing wings!

However, what we got was what you see to the left. The Ayumi herself is very cute and I would have bought her as a regular character. But those wings! They're practically shapeless blobs with fur on the outside and shiny material on the inside. They're just ugly. Nici's usually far better than this. I'm not sure how these wings got so messed up, but considering how much it costs for me to import these girls, I have no plans of adding Magic to my collection.

Once again, I forgot about Ayumis for awhile. Then the Nici Tumblr posted a picture of a new character that I instantly loved and I looked the new ones up right away. I wanted both, lucked into making some money from a doll sale, and bought both from my new ebay seller.

Faith and Joy

They arrived today, which led to me making this post. I was going to do a modern doll one instead of another plush one so quickly, but I decided I wanted to cover these instead, since I planned to in the future anyway.

So Faith and Joy are very different from the other Ayumis. They have swirly makeup on opposite sides of their faces and eyelashesque markings around the eye on the other side. Their tails remain with the highlighted tip, but the mane now has a stripe down the center instead of just a little poof at the front. Their ears, instead of being solid peach like the past Ayumis, now have a peach inside and a colored outside in the same shade as the lower half of the bodies. Faith is hiding her ears, but you can see the gray edging Joy's left ear. I really love these two and am happy to finally have a purple one! But Joy is actually my favorite, possibly my fave of the entire line. The chartreuse with the dark gray is just awesome.

In case anyone is wondering about eye colors, there are four. Secret, Harmony and Faith have green eyes. Hope, Talent and Joy have blue. Fun and Magic have pink. Love's are golden.

I highly recommend these. The quality is very nice and there's a wide range of Ayumi products, though I've stuck with the plush and haven't imported anything else. I'm very happy the line has lasted two years and I hope I'll be seeing a blue Ayumi next time!

PHOTO CREDITS: All mine except the promo image of Magic.

RECOMMENDED SITES:

http://www.nici-shop.de/en/Product-lines/Ayumi/
The German Nici shop where you can see the range of products.

http://www.ebay.com/usr/leolienchen-design
My favorite Nici seller. Their prices are a little higher than other German sellers, but the wait time is way less (I ordered these on May 10th and they got here today), they ship registered mail, and they include free goodies like gummi candy, bags and catalogs.

http://tinkesilvermist.tumblr.com/
The Nici Tumblr I follow.