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stress relief toys

zulala dorayaki on second-hand platforms

netizens share their collection of nie nie le

stress relief toys

netizens show the fun of pinching

pinching while going to school, pinching while eating, pinching while watching tv series... a decompression toy mainly made of pu material, the pinching music, is "controlling" the lives of young people. some people say that "if you don't pinch it, you won't be so happy." when this trend swept the young group, pinching music with different shapes and different feel even became a "fashion item", and the price in the second-hand market also rose sharply. pinching music, which costs hundreds or even thousands of yuan, is being chased by the "pinching circle". "it was originally a decompression toy, but the more i bought, the more it became supercharged." a young person who likes pinching music said that she is now preparing to quit and sell all the pinching music piled up at home. psychological experts believe that the ability of pinching music to control the "decompression psychology" of the younger generation is related to the characteristics of the times such as the lack of tactile stimulation. however, if you fall into the sales trap of merchants to buy pinching music to "decompress", you will spend too much money and cause a burden, which will not be worth the loss.

after entering the pit, "addicted"

netizens collected more than 300 nezha toys, with unit prices ranging from 30 yuan to 140 yuan

xiaole, a third-grade student, likes to carry a squishy toy in her schoolbag. although she doesn’t dare to take it out to play during class, she always holds the squishy toy in her hand and squeezes it on the way to and from school. when her parents asked her why she liked this thing so much, she answered: “to relieve stress.”

as parents born in the 1980s, they couldn't understand where the pressure on a third-grade child came from, but they knew that many of xiaole's classmates were also playing with the toys. they didn't give him much pocket money, and the toys weren't very expensive, so they didn't pay much attention to it. later, xiaole's parents found out at a relative's house that the relative's college-age child also had a large box of toys. only then did they realize that the toys were no longer just for elementary school students, and that college students played with them even more "crazily" than elementary school students.

on platforms such as xiaohongshu, bilibili, and douyin, many young people have posted photos of themselves enjoying themselves.

one netizen specially set up a corner in his room and placed a transparent display cabinet filled with layers of squeezing toys. the size of this display cabinet is larger than the shoe cabinet in an ordinary family.

"i've been into it for one month and four days, and i've bought more than 400 pinch toys, with more than 60 of them still on the way. there's really no room for them at home, so i put them in a storage cabinet, and the new storage box is on the way." netizen menmen posted pictures of the pinch toys in his home and asked other netizens for storage tips.

the squeezies collected by menmen are arranged layer by layer in a transparent storage cabinet. she also puts sticky notes on the cabinet door for classification. the notes read: "hamburgers, toast, muffins, donuts, cats, dogs and bears", etc. judging from these sticky notes and the display classification pictures behind them, the squeezies collected by menmen are mainly in the shape of food and pets.

a group of people like menmen who like to collect nienile have formed a "nienile circle". when asked how she was attracted to the game, college student xiao gu recalled that she was attracted to nienile through xiaohongshu. she once saw a post about "buying a car of nienile", but she didn't understand why the girl in the post did that.

with a curious mentality, xiao gu clicked on it, and then the platform kept pushing her content related to nienele, and she was pulled into the "big pit" of nienele.

xiao gu has bought more than 300 squishies, with the unit price ranging from 30 yuan to 140 yuan. later, in order to store these squishies of all sizes, she even bought two storage cabinets.

once you get into it, you can easily get addicted. xiao huang, a girl, recalled that she liked the squeeze machine because she thought it looked pretty and cute, and it relieved her stress when she squeezed it, so she bought a few to play with. usually, she would pick up a squeeze machine in her hand when she was watching tv series on her phone or doing an internship, and she became more and more addicted.

xiao huang said: "water-like, creamy mud, pure mud, and resistance mud have increasing hardness. the most popular ones now are the kneadable mud. the most popular one is the dry mud, which also has a little resistance, but is more fluffy."

“pinching the circle” brings business opportunities

it has become popular among young consumer groups and gradually formed a trendy product trading circle

when xiao huang first came into contact with nienile, he never thought that he would be able to make money from it.

xiao huang said that she bought them just for her own enjoyment at first, but then a big store happened to start selling new models of the squeeze toys, so she followed the trend and grabbed a few. after playing with them for a while, she felt that they were not good, so she put them up for sale on xianyu to make some money back, but she didn't expect that they were quickly sold out. this made xiao huang see a business opportunity, so whenever a big store started selling them, she would grab a few more, keep the ones she liked, and sell the rest. in this way, she completed the transformation from a squeeze lover to a seller.

with buyers and sellers, nienenle has gradually formed a trendy product trading circle. on social media platforms, topics related to nienenle are growing. the number of views of the topic #nienenle# on xiaohongshu platform has reached 2.61 billion, and online and offline sales are also continuing to rise.

nienene le has also become one of the categories with the fastest growing sales on e-commerce platforms.

the owner of an online pinching studio said that many customers got into the game because they wanted to relieve stress through pinching toys, but as merchants continued to launch pinching toys with different shapes, designs, and feels, some customers began to buy other pinching toys. over time, the pinching toys in their hands were no longer just for relieving stress, but became collectibles.

xiao shen is a collector of squeezy toys. she said she has liked collecting nice little toys since she was a child. last year, she started to collect squeezy toys with slow rebound feel, and gradually bought various squeezy toys for collection. now she has 1,200 squeezy toys. the prices of these squeezy toys range from tens of yuan to hundreds of yuan.

the nieniele in xiao gu's hands became more and more expensive. she started to buy some limited edition co-branded products from big stores. some nieniele specialty stores that are well-known in the "niniele circle" will be snapped up every time they put new products on sale, and they will also be resold at a higher price. for example, the dorayaki nieniele produced by zulala was once sold for more than a thousand yuan.

xiao gu said that the prices of these squeezy toys were hyped up for a while, but they also fell sharply. it was not uncommon for many squeezy toys to sell for thousands or hundreds of yuan at their peak, but now they have fallen back to 200 or 300 yuan. but even if they fall to this price, they are still much higher than the real value of the product itself.

"i usually don't follow the hype. i'm just a looker and only buy the styles i like." xiao gu said that when she was in school, she used her new year's money to buy the toys. later, when she started working, she used her salary or the money she earned from selling unused toys.

at the craziest time, most of xiao gu's monthly salary was used to buy toys, and the salary was spent in less than half a month.

the explosion of popularity of nieniele among young consumers has naturally attracted merchants to smell new business opportunities. some merchants have launched a series of marketing methods: limited-time purchases, limited-quantity customization and other marketing methods are emerging in an endless stream. some merchants will also open several stores on taobao, xiaohongshu, and weidian at the same time; before the sale starts, they will tell fans the specific time of sale through live broadcasts, and when the sale starts, they will be snapped up in an instant. after experiencing a series of operations such as limited quantity, crazy grabbing, skyrocketing and falling prices, some young people who like to collect nieniele began to realize that the limited edition was sold out in seconds because scalpers poured into the "ninie circle".

scalpers will use technology to snatch orders from some big stores, and after getting the limited edition nienie products, they will immediately sell them on xianyu at a high price. xiao huang, a nienie player, said that snatching popular nienie and then bidding and reselling them has become an "unwritten rule" in this circle.

even if you can't get the limited edition hot items, it doesn't matter, the merchants will also launch some consumption activities. for example, the well-known pinching shop yg once launched a full-amount gift activity, that is, during the event period, a single purchase of 288 yuan, 588 yuan, and 988 yuan will receive corresponding gifts, and also launched a vip membership system.

many stores have also launched giveaway activities for whole boxes (a sales method of buying a whole box), that is, if customers purchase all the new products in this batch, it will be more cost-effective than buying one individually. the prices vary in different stores and styles, and can range from a few hundred to one or two thousand.

"but in fact, many of the pinyin toys in the delivery box are not what i like, and most of them have to be sold on xianyu to make up for the loss." xiao gu said that many of the pinyin toys she sold online were similar to the goods or gifts in the delivery box.

in addition to selling a portion of the nienei music to "recover money", many people in the "nienei circle" simply chose to "quit the game". some of them called themselves "big complainers", some said they would "stay away from nienei" and that "the more enthusiastic you were when you bought it, the more regretful you will be when you quit the game".

on platforms that mostly sell second-hand goods, many young people also put their own nie nie le up for sale, and the quantity is large. these sales posts are generally marked with words such as "returned" and "low price". most of these "returned nie nie le" are priced from a few yuan to tens of yuan, and there are also "new nie nie le" priced at only a dozen yuan.

psychological experts remind

decompression should be moderate to avoid falling into the "sales trap"

lu junsheng, a psychological counselor at the youth psychology popularization platform and depression rehabilitation community "duguo", has a child who also plays pinney, so he noticed the popularity of pinney among the younger generation very early on.

lv junsheng believes that the main reason why nie nie music is popular is that its decompression function matches the needs of contemporary young people. contemporary young people and children are considered the "internet generation". they have been exposed to electronic products and online communication since childhood, and it is easy for them to fall into the short-term spiritual happiness brought by internet products, thereby reducing their awareness of their own bodies.

"pinching music awakens people's awareness of their own bodies through stimulation of the touch of the hands, the vision of the eyes, and part of the sense of smell. therefore, when playing pinching music, this dual stimulation of the body and mind has a stress-relieving effect," said lu junsheng.

however, the stress-relieving effect of pinching is very limited. it is relatively monotonous in terms of vision and smell, and the stimulation it brings to the sense of touch is also short-lived, and the feeling disappears after a few pinches. "my children used to play pinching, but they found it boring and stopped playing," said lv junsheng.

since the stress-relieving effect of squeezing games is limited, why do children and young people still voluntarily "fall into the trap"?

lv junsheng believes that the inner needs of children of different ages who like to play with pinch toys are different. for primary school students, they play with pinch toys more out of herd mentality and social needs. they often buy one when they see their classmates playing with it, and then put it down after playing with it at home. in addition, primary school students do not have much pocket money, so they are more willing to buy other toys and do not have a long-term interest in things like pinch toys with limited game effects. but it is different for college students or young people. many of them already have independent financial capabilities. when they get tired of playing with a pinch toy, they will want to buy another one.

nienile merchants are also targeting the young group, constantly launching new styles, and using various promotional methods such as blind boxes, end boxes, and gifts for purchases over a certain amount.

therefore, for young people, playing the game is not just a way to relieve stress, but has become a trendy product. lv junsheng observed that during the popularity of the game, the group that likes to play the game is mainly concentrated in the 2000s and later, while those born in the 1970s and 1980s are not very interested in the game.

he believes that this phenomenon is also a characteristic of the times in which the popularity of pinning music is evident. the reason for this characteristic is that children born after 2000 are exposed to the internet and electronic products too early, and lack outdoor games and group games.

"when those born in the 1970s and 1980s were young, their material life was not rich and there were few electronic products. the toys they played with most often were cars, dolls, transformers, or handmade toys such as paper, plasticine, and building blocks, or they simply chased and played outside. they didn't have much money to buy toys, so sometimes they made them themselves, and wooden sticks, mud, and waste materials could all become their tools. therefore, this generation has never lacked tactile stimulation of their hands since childhood, and naturally they have no interest in short-term tactile stimulation such as squeezing when they grow up."

lu junsheng reminded that whether it is children or adults, it is okay to treat the squeezy machine as a toy and play with it occasionally. however, if you fall into the sales trap and spend too much money on it, and it does not relieve stress but increases the burden, then it will not be worth it.

this article was written by our reporter zhang ziyuan and intern du shuijing

co-ordination/lin yan and zhang bin

picture/photo provided by the interviewee, screenshot from the internet