Real Vs. Fakes
When companies began to realize how popular Pound Puppies were becoming, everyone scrambled to follow in Mike Bowling's footsteps. Sometimes a little too close.
With success comes imitation, which in the business world, is just a simple way of stealing and piggy-backing off of another's popularity. And Pound Puppies had a lot of imitators.
Kennle Kuddles, Love Mutts, and Little Lonely Pups are just a few examples of knock-offs, clones, fakes, or whatever you want to call them. With so many of these out there, how can you tell what's a real Pound Puppy and what isn't?
The Patch
This is the most obvious way to tell if a plush is a real Pound Puppy or not.
Pound Puppies have an embroidered logo on their rear. These patches can be heart or bone shaped, can have a puppy head, and the letters PP somewhere in the patch. Depending on the brand, there is a great variation. Here are photos of real, authentic PP emblems.
Eyes
Almost all Pound Puppies (aside from the very early ones) have very distinctive eyes. They are either oval or round and made of plastic; never glass. Very early Pound Puppies were made with hand-painted eyes, and some have been embroidered. They don't stick out too far from the plush either. Below are pictures of authentic PP eyes from various plush. While there are differences, there's definitely something unique that separates them from others.
Exceptions
Like most things, there are exceptions, and Pound Puppies have a few. When the 2010 TV show was rebooted by Hasbro, the toys bore no resemblance to past plushies, and looked more like the characters of the show instead.
Galoob's 6 inch and 2-3 inch mini plush from 1996-1998 do not have logos, but do have the proper eyes. It appears Galoob did make some larger Pound Puppies as well, and these did have the logo and the right eyes.
On the subject of Galoob, there's one mini that has neither the patch or the eyes. This is the white seal in the Pound Ocean line. His eyes are solid black, and not flat. It's a mystery why Galoob did this. but it's very much an official PP!
There was also a sewing kit released that allowed one to create their very own puppy - either a regular size or newborn. These kits were legit however, and even had realistic eyes and patches to go with them. But of course, one didn't necessarily have to use the eyes or the patch, making the job of identification even harder. This is what those look like anyway.
Known Fakes
