My Esila merch finally arrived. Here's my review of it! I ordered 5 items:
Sheep Cuddle Keychain ($14.95)
Sheep Cuddle Mini Standee ($12.95)
Model Standee ($21.00)
Sleepy Standee ($21.00)
Chibi Tumbler ($32.99)
The Good:
The items arrived in good condition. The acrylic items all have clear and colorful prints. The model standee and sleepy standee are actually very large. Even the keychain is big, filling my whole hand.
https://files.catbox.moe/pdrxxu.jpg
As you can see, I'm gonna need a bigger jar.
In terms of price, they're a little more expensive than similar items I've purchased before, but supposedly they're made in texas, so there's higher labor costs involved, but that also means there's no expensive international shipping to pay for. Because of the size of the standees, I think it's a good value overall.
The Bad:
Since UwU market makes the items to order, they say it can take up to 30 days for your items to be manufactured, but it actually took a whole two months, not including shipping time. This is somehow still a shorter turn-around time than I've experienced with overseas companies, but I'm putting it in this section because I'm holding uwumarket to their own standard (the aforementioned "up to 30 days"). Note: in the original email it states 14-30 business days, while the product page states 3-6 weeks, but even in the worst case they still fall short.
Unfortunately, there are some problems with a couple of the items.
The Model Standee does not fit properly into it's base. If you shift the base, the standee can shakes back and forth, and if you try to pick it up, the base will fall right off. See the video link for a demonstration of the shakiness.
The problems with the standee, however, are minor compared to what's next.
The Ugly:
The Chibi Tumbler. I don't know where to start on this thing, it has so many problems. I suppose I'll start from the top.
It came with a metal straw. Though the ends of it are formed into a rounded shape, the actual cut on the material has very rough edges. I'm actually afraid I might cut my tongue on it if it brushed against the end of the straw the wrong way. See the attached photo and note how jagged the edges are. This probably can be fixed using a drill with a sanding bit to smooth down the opening, but if so, why didn't they do so at the factory?
Next: The printing is just bad. The whole print is covered in what look like jpeg compression artifacts, and it's overall blurry.
The pattern also doesn't wrap around the tumbler evenly. There's an obvious seam where parts of the art is cut off to either side of it.
"But", you say, "The straw is probably just bundled in from a 3rd party source and not even made by uwu market, and the printing problems are probably the vtuber's fault. She probably provided bad art files to start with! You can't blame this on Uwu Market!"
That might be true, I don't know how the design process goes. But even in that case, the Chibi Tumbler still commits an unforgivable sin.
See those dark lines in that zoomed in image? Those are hairs. And they're not just on the surface, they're actually embedded into the tumbler itself, and it's not just a few, they're all over it. This is actually disgusting and I don't know how a problem like this would have slipped through if anyone had actually bothered to look at the product before mailing it out. Esila may not be a particular large creator, but she still deserves better than this literal biohazard I've received.