Healing in short form: American McGee crafts Plushie Dreadfuls as totems of community, candor, and courage\” />
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Plush toys are typically seen as relics of childhood, simple symbols of comfort and innocence. But for American McGee, they have become a canvas for emotional storytelling and social reflection. Best known for reimagining fairytales through his dark and immersive Alice video games, McGee has taken a striking creative turn.
His brand, Plushie Dreadfuls, transforms the plush toy into a vessel for exploring sensitive topics: mental illness, identity, trauma, and the unseen struggles people carry. In this interview, he shares how personal experience, community collaboration, and a commitment to honesty have shaped a line of plushies unlike any other.
Q: Your journey from game designer to plushie brand founder is unconventional and compelling. What inspired you to shift from creating immersive video games to designing therapeutic plush toys?
American: The idea of a Distressed White Rabbit Plushie was first introduced in “American McGee’s Alice” during the opening scene of the game. We see a young Alice clutching a white rabbit plushie – her only remaining possession after a fire destroyed her home and family. And while designing a 3rd chapter to the Alice series, we produced an homage to that white rabbit plushie as a reward for our supporters. The success of that first plushie led to the creation of more – many of them echoing the mental health and other difficult themes found in my games.
Q: Plushie Dreadfuls tackles themes that many brands avoid: mental illness, chronic conditions, and marginalized identities. What motivated you to take this bold approach, and how has the response from your community shaped the brand?
American: When I was in high school, my mother married a transgender woman, and I witnessed a vicious hate attack against her that left her hospitalized for two weeks and absolutely shattered my mother, me, and my family. Watching someone I loved endure that kind of bigotry cemented my hatred of prejudice in all forms. Those experiences forged in me an indelible empathy for any marginalized group and fierce anti-bullying stance.
As I think with all artists, my creative work has been a way to both process my own pain and to give voice to others who’ve lived through similar experiences. In my video game Alice: Madness Returns, I wove in themes of childhood sexual and physical abuse, drawing directly from my own experiences of being abused by family members and family friends as a young child.
In terms of community, it was the community that helped bring many Plushie Dreadfuls designs to life. That process began with the Crowd Design efforts on “Alice: Asylum” (the third chapter in the “Alice” series). Crowd Design invited our fans into the creative process and allowed them to help shape the story, locations, characters, and more.
Q: The concept of “Crowd Design” is a unique innovation you’ve brought from gaming into plushie development. How does inviting your audience into the design process impact the final product and their emotional connection to it?
American: We often say that we don’t design our products, our customers do. We listen to their requests for new designs (based on topics related to mental and physical health). And then present an initial concept for feedback once enough interest is gathered. During the Crowd Design process, our customers share their personal experiences with these difficult topics. They comment on ways in which those experiences can be expressed within a plushie design. The result is a design that connects with them on a deeper level – reflecting their ideas and their struggles.
Q: Your best-selling plushies such as the Anxiety Rabbit and Borderline Personality Disorder Rabbit clearly resonate with people. What do you think makes these designs so meaningful for your audience?
American: It’s important to note that it’s impossible for our designs to fully capture all the different ways in which individuals experience the topics our plushies represent. But for those individuals who do resonate with a particular design, it often comes down to how certain symbols, colors, and features mirror how they experience these issues.
With BPD, for example, the plushie carries a backpack in the shape of a cartoonish bomb. And contained within that backpack are two mini-plushies which are black and white in color. This is a plushie way of representing concepts such as black and white thinking. Or the sometimes explosive nature of BPD. But to be clear, these designs don’t always resonate with everyone. That is why we often do a 2nd or even 3rd Crowd Design session on these designs – so that we can continue to listen and revise designs based on continuous feedback.
Q: You’ve spoken about Jungian psychology and the idea of “shadow integration” as a design influence. How do you see Plushie Dreadfuls serving as therapeutic tools or catalysts for emotional healing?
American: Many Plushie Dreadfuls are tactile manifestations of the Jungian shadow – those hidden or repressed parts of the psyche we often fear or reject. By embodying conditions and emotions society is unaware of, misunderstands, or stigmatizes, each plush becomes a mirror inviting shadow integration.
Holding a plush like the ‘Dissociation Rabbit’ or ‘Substance Use Disorder Bunny’ allows for emotional externalization, self-compassion, and dialogue. These aren’t just toys – they’re symbolic tools that can catalyze healing by transforming shame into shared humanity and suffering into shared story.
Q: Plushie Dreadfuls has quietly reshaped the plush toy industry. How do you view your impact on adult plushie culture and the broader shift toward emotionally resonant collectibles?
American: During Covid, at a time when Anxiety levels were incredibly high, we found that many were acquiring our Anxiety Rabbit to help represent and process the feelings with which they were struggling. Since then, we’ve seen other plushie brands pick up on related themes – including mental and physical health topics – in their designs.
All of this happens at a time when plushie collecting (by adults) in general is on the upswing —likely a result of pressures related to modern life (increasing cost of living, smaller living spaces, declining birth rates, and increased anxiety – especially for marginalized groups).
Q: Many of your customers are neurodivergent, LGBTQ+, or living with invisible illnesses. How do you ensure that your product development and messaging remain inclusive, authentic, and respectful of lived experience?
American: Our staff mirrors our customers in terms of diversity and mental/health issues. We don’t just make plushies for these topics, we live these topics on a daily basis. And in those places where we lack sufficient knowledge of a topic, we rely on our Crowd Design process to connect directly with the communities that experience and can guide us on those topics.
Q: Looking ahead, what’s your long-term vision for Plushie Dreadfuls not just as a product line, but as a cultural movement?
American: The overall goal is to help people. To make conversations around these topics easier. To provide totems around which communities can be built. And to put forward resources and connections that help people better understand themselves and these issues.
I hope that we might normalize these dialogs such that, in the future, instead of saying “I’m fine,” when asked how we’re doing, we might feel comfortable saying, “I’m dreadful.” Making the invisible visible is the first step to transforming our challenges into positive results.
Plushie Dreadfuls redefines what a plush toy can represent: not just comfort, but connection, candor, and courage. Through designs rooted in real stories and collaborative feedback, the brand offers more than collectibles; it offers language for pain, and visibility for those too often overlooked.
American McGee has built more than a product line, he has helped build a space where emotional truth is both acknowledged and embraced. The message is clear: healing does not always start with words. Sometimes, it begins with something soft enough to hold.
