Gengar’s mouth is a portal to hell, and people want to get inside

2021, right? Who would have guessed?

Everyone. We all guessed. We are only eight days into the new year, and yep, things are still terrible. I want to go crawl into a hole. In particular, a mouth-shaped hole that’s attached to a large, purple pocket monster with glowing red eyes. And by golly, it sounds like other people want to do that, too.

It’s just our luck, then, that The Pokémon Company and P-Bandai have announced a new, perfect piece of Pokémon merchandise: the Gengar cushion, which has space for your head to rest right inside the mouth — which is literally a portal to hell — and a pink, cushiony pillow of a tongue to lay on. The tongue is just around 5 feet, 5 inches long, so for me, at least, I can use a little bit of tongue to cover my toes. (I’m partly regretting typing this.) For easy storage, the tongue can be rolled up and stuffed back into Gengar’s mouth.

Grid View

• Photo: The Pokémon Company/P-Bandai
• Photo: The Pokémon Company/P-Bandai

Frankly, I’m surprised no one had thought of this before. Unfortunately for most of us, it’s already sold out on the P-Bandai website, despite costing almost $300. According to Pokeshopper, a website that tracks Pokémon merchandise, the Gengar cushion sold out in just over an hour. It’s unclear if P-Bandai will over another wave of pre-orders, sadly.

The Gengar pillow is absolutely reminiscent of Gengar’s Gigantamax form from Pokémon Sword and Shield. It’s in this form where his mouth takes over most of his body, as noted in the Pokédex:

Rumor has it that its gigantic mouth leads not into its body, filled with cursed energy, but instead directly into the afterlife. It lays traps, hoping to steal the lives of those it catches. If you stand in front of its mouth, you’ll hear your loved ones’ voices calling out to you.

The other thing about Gengar is that, according to Pokémon lore, Gengar was once a human. In Pokémon Moon, Gengar’s Pokédex entry talks about the creepy cutie’s desire for a “traveling companion,” which is what it’s trying to do by “taking the lives of other humans.”

Man, Pokémon are cool.

Anyway, it’s clear that I’m not the only one who’d like to crawl into Gengar’s warm abyss. The internet is also very intrigued by the prospect. People are making memes and fanart for the piece of merchandise.

It’s a similar reaction that people on the internet had to another piece of Pokémon merchandise, the Metapod sleeping bag. P-Bandai also produced that perfect real-life cocoon to wrap up inside of. If there’s one thing that P-Bandai does right, it’s knowing what the people want.