In case you fell asleep from the years of 1997-2007 or were otherwise lucky enough to be spared from the onslaught, Harry Potter is a quasi-beloved fantasy book franchise about a little wizard boy and his little wizard friends.
One of those kids is named Ron Weasley, who briefly had a pet rat named Scabbers. Pet rats weren’t very well-regarded by the general populace at this point, but around the release of the film adaptations, quite a few people found the little rat man quite charming and it quite inexplicably became profitable to sell rat-themed merchandise* to wee ones.
Then Scabbers turned out to be an old man pretending to be a rat to deceive the children, but that’s not relevant to this article. What we’re talking about today: SCABBERS MERCHANDISE! And uh, Ron too, I guess.
*Incidentally, this is an extended advertisement for my upcoming zine, Rat Facts. It’s facts about rats.