#I’ve been seeing Ptutu fanart being stolen for profit lately

[tutumydear]

🚨WEEWOO WEEWOO! This is the Ptutu merch police! 🚨

I don’t wear bows much anymore. But I was intrigued when I heard of these because wow, what a cute idea! They weren’t very pricey, so I snapped up all the styles they offered.

In the most neutral tone in the world, let me share this information with you, person who may be interested in purchasing your own:

The medallions are pixel-y printed image files individually cut with scissors and pasted to the underside of thin plastic domes. The floppy ribbon has a printed image on it as well, and the metal clips, ribbon, and medallions are all hot glued together.

Let’s not speak on the quality, as they were cheap to buy and consequently cheap to produce. Mmhm mmhm. Understandable.

But. All the images used are either from official art or the show, EXCEPT for this one:

I’m 99% sure that part of this medallion’s image is from someone else’s fanart. It looks to me like cropped, cut out, and pasted fanart on top of official art. At least.

This seller offers a lot of different franchise versions of these bows, all using official art. Maybe they didn’t realize that the pieces they used here aren’t? It’s definitely not theirs.

From their shop: “…I do not claim ownership of any character or image used in my designs.”

Even given the benefit of the doubt, I’m very unsure of how ethical this product may be. Some light digging would’ve revealed that the added art isn’t official. I see no credit or signs of a consenting and profiting artist.

There is debate about using official art in fanmerch. Printing manga page scans and using them in your anime-themed resin tray is an example I’ve seen often.

Even fanart is almost always illegal to sell YEEESH

Obviously when it comes to Ptutu, I don’t have strong feelings as a consumer, seeing as I did buy these.

I might feel differently if the rights owner gave us literally anything merch-wise, but for now, sure. I’ll eat up your official unofficial merchandise. (Hint hint I request a Ptutu resin tray hint hint)

But, wow. I would think anyone would draw the line at using someone else’s fanart to make money with. I’m looking directly at aliexpress enamel pins.

Normally if I have a poor experience with a merch seller or receive poor product, I just don’t share it. No harm, no foul.

I’m gonna explicitly say for this one though, pass it over babes. Pass it over.

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If you happen to recognize the added artwork and can identify who it belongs to, as crummy as the printing quality is, please let me or them know.