Obscurity, much?/Jewelpet

Next to *Hello Kitty* and *Onegai My Melody*, *Jewelpet* is a very popular Sanrio franchise... in Japan. In the rest of the world, it's either a cult hit *at best* or completely obscure. The fact that the franchise is the second to get its own page after *Pokémon* should explain a lot.

Whatever the reasoning, *Jewelpet* has a long, complicated history with this, overlapping this with Why Don't We Have That, going back to the premiere of the first anime in April 2009.

## General

* The entire franchise in Malaysia, pure and simple. While it's a semi-cult hit in America (especially among magical girl fans) thanks to the power of fansubs, it's completely obscure in Malaysia and would have been completely forgotten had it not been for some merch flowing in.
* This trope is likely being mitigated in the United States somewhat by 2021, allegedly due to some Walmart stores carrying merchandise (Tropes Fanon cannot confirm it for certain, since Walmart doesn't list any on their website). Whether or not the anime will be licensed, however, is yet to be seen.

## Toys

* As a rule of thumb, unless you're willing to import, the *Jewelpet* toys are nigh-impossible to buy outside of Europe or Asia (and in the case of Malaysia, almost *completely* impossible), especially if you're buying new.
* Third-party sellers of *Jewelpet* merch usually never take kindly to Canadian fans. Most of the time, they'll sell to the US, Europe, and Australia only, or exclude North America from shipping altogether (eBay, as it's a US-based site, won't allow the US to be excluded from shipping). If you're lucky, you would find some merch on certain anime sites, but those are few and far between. And if you were shopping on Amazon (until 2020 when the merch began to run out), that was a completely different story. Additionally, some shipments of said merch were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
* If you're not wanting to use either eBay or Amazon, good luck- though during 2011 and 2016, one could find some merch in Sanrio stores. The *Jewelpet* plushies sold in the US just do *not* connect you to Webgurumi, as *that* is barred from representation there.
* The Sweetspets. Rarely, if ever, was a plush based on a specific Sweetspet made, and no merchandise based on said Sweetspets are on most online sites anymore. Additionally, in the anime they've only appeared in *the movie*.
* The Jewelpet tie-in toys, such as the Jewelpod and Jewel Watch replicas, are nigh-impossible to receive outside of Japan without being subject to imports (some plushies crossed the ocean with no problem). If you want a talking Ruby plush, you're out of luck with that too.
* The "JLOL" line was only meant for Japanese customers. Therefore, import gamers who bought plushies from the line just to play the virtual pet game are also out of luck, especially since the site most likely shut down as of this writing.
* And as of 2016, at least, Toys R US Japan has stopped stocking Jewelpet toys entirely.
* There are Jewelpet plushies that depict the pets holding a flag while wearing red, white, and blue ribbons. Sound familiar? Red, white, and blue are the colors of the United States flag, and thus this might look as if said plushies were the most favorable depictions of America that any *Jewelpet* plush ever had. Unfortunately, barring imports, they weren't released in the US either.

## Print media

* The mangaka of *Happy Happy Clover* was once asked to make a *Jewelpet* manga. It only lasted a few chapters, and most *Jewelpet* fans outside of Japan have no idea there was even a manga adaptation.
* As per usual, the *Jewelpet* light novel is this outside of Japan, with an added kick in the teeth because the light novel market already *was* this in the US before J-Novel Club got involved in bringing light novels to the US. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of them.

## Videogames

* The *Jewelpet* videogames are notorious for not being released outside Japan, *not even in Europe* despite the anime getting its first two seasons localized and released there. There are *six games for it*. And yet their only videogame appearance outside Japan was in a *Hello Kitty* game.
	+ Luckily for import gamers, just get an American Nintendo DS or DS Lite as well as the games and you can be able to play the pre-3DS era games, as the console is region-free. Unfortunately, the Nintendo 3DS is region-locked, so games 4-6 are only compatible with a Japanese 3DS... which will cost you.

## Examples from the anime

* The anime is this outside Japan, and Americans who know about it found out about it online. The reason for this trope happening to that anime is because of Sega and Sanrio being afraid of getting sued for making a franchise similar to Webkinz, a popular franchise in America at the time. If you get past that, the two anime companies most likely to want it went bust. Despite all of this, plushies managed to cross the ocean, but are mostly limited to Sanrio stores and online sites nowadays.
	+ It's not just limited to the US. Sanrio once had a UK site for the franchise. Then Puella Magi Madoka Magica happened out of their control, and the anime wasn't released in the UK either.
	+ Concerning Jewelpet *characters*, any Jewelpet not named Ruby, Sapphie, Garnet, Diana, or Labra tend to be semi-obscure at best, although the majority of them appeared in at least one Jewelpet video game (though the games were only released in Japan thanks to the above).
	+ Allegedly, an English dub by Omni Productions does exist (for Southeast Asia), but if it does, it's most likely lost.
	+ *Attack Travel!*, already being delayed due to production issues (coincidentally occurring around the same time as the aforementioned COVID-19 pandemic), is guaranteed this outside of Japan as one-off anime shorts seemingly do not get released outside of the country.
	+ On top of that, the Blu-ray releases are also not English-friendly. So if you import the Blu-rays from Japan, be aware of this fact.
	+ It was one of the Sanrio franchises that *weren't* referenced in the *Sanrio Danshi* mixed-media project (that was, until a Sanrio Boys audition in 2021), mostly as it was more-or-less exclusively popular with girls in Japan.
	+ Luckily, the Webkinz situation had been mitigated somewhat by 2021. While Sega and Sanrio still can't make a version of the Jewelland virtual pet website for the United States (and the Japanese site likely shut down anyways), they *have* been able to sell merchandise of the characters (including, allegedly, some merch at retailers such as Walmart). Either way, it's no longer a matter of legal issues (well, those involving third-parties, at least), it's a matter of licensing; the anime has still yet to be licensed in North America or any other English-speaking country.