What Makes Fluffy Favourites So Popular?
If you’re a regular online slots player, there’s no chance you won’t have come across the famous “Fluffy Favourites” range of slots from Eyecon at least once in your travels across the internet. Even if you haven’t played the slots yourself, you’ll have seen advertising for them. They’re among the most popular slots at almost every online slots website they’re featured at, and their enduring appeal means that Eyecon never stops working on new sequels to the original 2006 slot. Plenty of players have won big money playing “Fluffy Favourites” slots, but nobody has made as much money out of them as Eyecon itself.
While nobody can deny the popularity of “Fluffy Favourites,” we sometimes find ourselves wondering how and why the slots became so popular. Before Eyecon came up with the concept, the idea of an online slots game themed around cuddly toys would have sounded like a strange one. Online slots were still quite a new concept in 2006, but the themes they used were based on the traditions of the past, and the styles that date back to earlier slot games and gaming cabinets. Fruits and jewels-themed online slots with 10 free spins were as popular then as they are now. The Irish theme was well represented, as were slots based on popular television shows and movies. Most players, if asked if they’d be interested in slots based on stuffed toys, would probably have answered with a firm ‘no.’
Perhaps Eyecon knew something about the market that nobody else did. As recently as ten years ago, it was widely assumed that the overwhelming majority of people who played online slots were male. That assumption has turned out to be incorrect. A slim majority of people who gamble are male, but female players make up a much larger proportion of the market than anyone used to give them credit for. The article we’ve linked to is about gambling addiction rather than gambling participation, but also provides an insight into how many women play online slots every day. The numbers might surprise you. They certainly surprised us. It’s likely that the cute and cuddly world of “Fluffy Favourites” and its sequels appeals more to women than it does to men, but at the same time, that can’t be the only factor. What else might explain the colossal number of players the series of slots attract daily?
Here’s another theory – one that some of you will agree with even if you never admit it to your friends and family. As much as society likes to believe that cuddly toys are childhood objects, they’re not. Many people carry their attachment to teddy bears and other stuffed toys into adulthood with them, and never let go of them. Research carried out in the United Kingdom last year revealed that as many as one in three fully grown adults still take their favorite stuffed toy from childhood to bed with them every night. That means many of the people reading this article right now are currently nodding along on agreement! Apparently, the attachment starts when teenagers go away to university and take their teddy bears as a home comfort, and then they never break the habit. If you’re in a lifelong love affair with a stuffed toy, it’s much easier to see how “Fluffy Favourites” might appeal to you as an online slots option.
The United Kingdom itself plays a huge factor in the slot’s overall popularity. The “Fluffy” slots are played there more often than they’re played anywhere else in the world, and again, there might be an easy-to-follow reason for that. From the early 1970s to the early 1990s, there was a popular children’s television show in the country called “Rainbow” that featured, as you’ve probably already guessed, a cast of cute, cuddly, talking stuffed toys. George the pink hippo, in particular, looks exactly like a “Fluffy Favourites” character. That’s two whole generations of British kids for whom “Rainbow” was a big part of their childhood, and their affection for the show might easily have lasted into adulthood. “Fluffy Favourites” probably reminds them of it on a subliminal level. This might even explain why a rainbow appears in the sky in the background of more than one of the “Fluffy” slots. There’s only one problem with this theory – Eyecon is an Australian company. We’ve been unable to verify whether “Rainbow” was shown in Australia or not, but if it wasn’t, it’s hard to see how Eyecon could have been influenced by it.
Nostalgia is, so we think, also an important factor in the importance of the “Fluffy” series. Playing games is about escapism, and where better to escape to than our youth? Nostalgia is the reason why so many classic television shows and movies are currently being re-made and re-booted. Nostalgia is the reason why so many adults collect action figures from shows that haven’t been on television for twenty years or more. The older we get, the more we yearn to feel a connection to our youth, and the things that we filled our youth with. Maybe “Fluffy Favourites” leans into that. The series allows us to play online slots – a decidedly adult hobby – but also allows us to dream of happier, simpler times while we’re doing it. We’re not psychologists, but we imagine that most psychologists would tell you that’s a fairly potent combination.
Maybe we’re all missing the point. Maybe the reason that the “Fluffy Favourites” series is so popular is down to nothing more than the fact that they’re all exceptionally well put-together online slots, with slick gameplay, innovative side-games, and generous bonus features. Online slots are a simple form of entertainment that can sometimes be overcomplicated by some providers and developers, but Eyecon is masterful at taking a simple game and building bonus features into it that are fun and rewarding rather than frustrating and hard to access. The theme might not matter at all; it may be that people play the slots because they’re fun to play, and nothing more.
Whatever the reason, “Fluffy Favourites” is as legendary a series of slots as has ever been designed and released. We’ve seen the “Fluffy” gang go from the beach to the fairground, and then into space. We don’t know what’s next for them, but we know that when Eyecon provides us with the next installment, we’ll all be playing it to find out.
