Meet Lamb Chop, America’s hottest dog toy
Most toys that cross Foxie’s path rarely last. Rope toys are torn to shreds. Squeaky ones fall silent in her paws. Stuffies lose their eyes and ears once Foxie’s 12-pound frame gets hold of them.
But when Andy Batdorf and his partner gave their senior Yorkie-Maltese mix a soft, miniature lamb wearing a birthday hat, Foxie was different. She played with the squeaky toy gently and even wanted to carry it outside on a walk. Batdorf recalled wondering whether Foxie’s tenderness toward Lamb Chop was because they looked similar — both white and fluffy.
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“Her maternal instincts kicked in,” Batdorf, 35, said. “She treats it like her own little pup.”
One of the hottest dog toys in America is a squeaky stuffed animal toy named Lamb Chop. On the surface it doesn’t look unique, but it has taken a mysteriously strong hold on the country’s dogs and their owners: Millions are sold annually, and it is consistently one of the top-selling toys on Chewy, Petco and Amazon, where listings get thousands of rave reviews.
Dog owners throw Lamb Chop-themed parties and photo shoots. They dress their dogs as Lamb Chop for Halloween and buy them Lamb Chop beds to sleep in alongside dozens of their Lambys, as they are affectionately called. The dogs, from rat terriers to Rottweilers, seem to be equally enthralled.
The roots of its popularity date back decades.
Shari Lewis, a ventriloquist and entertainer, introduced an inquisitive puppet with a mop of curly hair named Lamb Chop in the ’50s and featured it on “The Shari Lewis Show” from 1960 to 1963. Then in the ’90s, Lewis brought the puppet to a new generation with “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along” on PBS. Lewis won Emmys and received acclaim for episodes about topics including bullying and how to stop biting your nails.
The puppet had already inspired a children’s toy when, in 2010, the pet product company Multipet International Inc. brought Lamb Chop to the dog toy market in the form of a 10-inch-tall toy with five squeakers. Lamb Chop was a runaway hit. Demand surged in just a few years, and the company started producing a 6-inch mini Lamb Chop and a jumbo, 24-inch Lamb Chop, as well as introducing seasonal editions.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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