Also, while it's in my head, I don't know if it's a regional or age thing or what, but I didn't hear the term "plushie" until I was in college. Everyone I knew called them stuffed animals, and always that, never plush, plushie, or stuffie. Plushie is what I hear everyone use now, and I don't know when or why the shift happened, or if it happened and I was just in some odd bubble.
Because the shift happened at basically the exact same time as the height of the MLP craze and there's no way that's just a coincidence
Except it is, because I was several years into college by the time Bronies became a thing in early 2011—and I would know, thanks to @chasejxyz I was in the vanguard1, basically—and by that time I'd already heard the term used plenty. Don't get me wrong, I am sure they played a large part in its proliferation, but talking to my younger coworkers and hearing from other folks it can't have been the origin. Something shifted in the late 00s and I want to do some actual academic research in it now.
-
i would also have posted the article I wrote about it in 2011 for UB's Generations Magazine, but not only is the archive gone, but so is the blog where I anonymized things like my deadname and reposted it. The internet is always more fragile and ephemeral than you think.
