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The Sushi Roll
A duck sculpted and painted to look like a shrimp nigiri sushi piece. Quirky novelty duck for foodies and sushi fans.
Specifications
| Material | Vinyl (PVC), textured rice-grain sculpting |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 3.4 x 3.6 x 3.3 in |
| Weight | 2.2 oz |
| Color | Yellow head, white textured body, orange shrimp detailing |
| Age Grade | 3+ years. Not edible, despite convincing appearance. |
| Origin | Designed on Vashon Island, WA · Assembled overseas |
| Care Instructions | Wipe clean. Do not attempt to dip in soy sauce, we mean it, we've had emails. |
The Full Story
The Sushi Roll exists because of a lunch order mix-up that, in the grand tradition of most of our best designs, spiraled wildly out of proportion to its original size. A design meeting in the mid-2000s ordered in from a nearby sushi restaurant, and the order arrived with an extra tray of ebi nigiri nobody had requested. Rather than let it go to waste, someone joked that the shrimp nigiri "kind of looked like a duck if you squinted," a statement that should have ended the conversation and instead started an entire product line.
Sculpting the rice grain texture convincingly proved to be a genuinely difficult manufacturing challenge, requiring more mold revisions than almost any other duck in the catalog. Early versions looked, by the design team's own admission, "more like a golf ball than sushi," a note that appears, verbatim, in at least four rounds of internal feedback documents.
We do get, with some regularity, customer emails asking if it is, in fact, edible. It is not. We understand the confusion, the texture work really is that convincing, but please, for your own sake, do not eat the duck.
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Customer Reviews
Genuinely fooled a dinner guest for a solid three seconds before they realized it wasn't real food. The texture work is impressively convincing.
Sits on my kitchen windowsill, gets a comment from basically every guest who visits. Great little novelty item.
She has requested three more for her coworkers now.
Should have seen this coming honestly, but my dog absolutely lost his mind trying to get to this thing before I could stop him. No damage to the duck, just a lesson learned about where to display it.
As someone who worked in a sushi restaurant for six years during college, I have to hand it to the sculpting team on this one. The rice grain texture is shockingly close to the real thing, not just a smooth bump pattern like a lot of cheaper novelty food items use. Genuinely impressive attention to detail on something this small and, ultimately, silly.
This review exists purely as a public service. Do not put this in the microwave, even briefly, even as a joke for a group chat. I am not proud of this. The duck did not survive. Neither, almost, did my microwave.