Limited Villager Representation
I pre-ordered this book in February, with no pictures to give me a clue about what the book would look like. I have Steve Foxe's Mario books and like them, so I thought this one would be good, too. I've waited excitedly for 5 months, looking forward to drawing and playing on the pages with Broccolo, Tammi, and my other favorite villagers. With "over 500 stickers" as a selling point of this book, I'd expected that there'd be at least one sticker of each villager. Nope. We get multiples of the same few characters over and over, even in the same pose. The characters used in the book are the same villagers that are on EVERY piece of Animal Crossing merchandise. There's that boring ol' cat Raymond, Audie, Fang, Sherb, Stitches, Judy, Hamlet... you get the idea. The same old villagers that we're all sick of seeing on EVERY Animal Crossing item. Hundreds of villagers merchandise makers could choose from, and all of the merchandise has the same few. Boring. Just boring. None of my favorite villagers are in the book at all. No big blue smiley-faced Broccolo, no cheery yellow Tammi, no Quillson, no Mitzi, no Bluebear. Fuchsia is on the cover of the book, but she isn't on any stickers, unless I overlooked her. O'Hare appears in a very very tiny figure on one page, but he has no sticker. And just in case anyone's wondering, there are no Sanrio villagers. Of course we get plenty of stickers of the Nooks, the owls, Flick, CJ, Redd, the dodos, etc. The non-villager characters are all represented. Also, I'm surprised that there are no leaf-logo stickers at all. Seems like something that would naturally be included, but no. I do like that the stickers include trees from all four seasons. There are also stickers of fruit, fish, bugs, tools, crafting materials, star fragments, a few villager houses, the town buildings... lots of object pictures. I'll include photos of a few of the sticker pages. My photos are not of all of the sticker pages, only a few of them. There are more sticker than these, but they're generally repeats of the same or similar stickers. The artwork on the book pages is not original. It's the same artwork we see on all other Animal Crossing merchandise. The pictures that are printed on my pillowcase, blanket, and jigsaw puzzle are used several times throughout the book. If you've ever shopped for anything Animal Crossing, you can probably picture in your mind the exact three illustrations I'm talking about. The book also contains stickers of the round-bottomed artwork from the bedsheet set. The artwork is fine; it's just disappointing that a new book has the same old artwork that's all over the merchandise. With 500+ stickers and 32 pages, this book was an opportunity to feature ALL villagers, but instead the author went with the same villagers that are on everything. What a missed opportunity! If you like those few overused villagers, then you'll probably like this book. If you like all things Animal Crossing, you'll probably like this book. If you're buying the book for new Animal Crossing artwork, this book isn't for you, since there is no new artwork in this book. If you prefer some of the more interesting villagers rather than the overused ones, you might be disappointed with this book. If you know ahead of time what you're getting (i.e. just the most overused we're-sick-of-these villagers), then that might help your disappointment.