Overview
Popples is a toy and television franchise created by Those Characters From Cleveland (TCFC), a subsidiary of American Greetings. Popples resemble brightly colored marsupial teddy bears with long tails ending in a pom-pom. Each Popple character transforms to resemble a brightly colored ball. In 2018, Popples was sold to Hasbro.
History
Susan Trentel, who worked for TCFC and had created the first prototypes on Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears, was the plush toy designer who invented the method for transforming the Popple. Supposedly, the idea came from rolling up socks. Trentel worked with art director Thomas Schneider on the creation of the first prototypes (Patent #4614505).
Toy merchandise
Popples were manufactured by Mattel between 1986 and 1988. Each toy had a pouch on the back that could be inverted so the character rolled into the pouch and resembled a brightly colored ball.
Original line (1986)
The first introduction included nine Popples in three different sizes
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).