Meet Ponkichi’s Adorable Vegetable Fairies

Chinese cabbage dog, wasabi beaver, shiitake mushroom cape penguin, what on earth are these? These are illustrator Ponkichi’s answer to children who hate eating vegetables - Animals X Vegetable characters. 

• What are “Vegetable Fairies (おやさい妖精さん)"? 
• Super Adorable Vegetables & Fruit Fairies
• New Ventures, Other Types of Fairies
• Collabo Cafe: Vegetable Fairies Kitchen [Tokyo Harajuku & Hyogo Kobe]

What are “Vegetable Fairies (おやさい妖精さん)"? 

Ponkichi (@PonkichiM), who is also the creator of Shiba Inu Design Banknotes, is the original creator and illustrator of the Vegetable Fairies. The illustrations were first released on Twitter in 2019, and have since gathered a large fan base among people of all ages. 

「おやさい妖精さん o-yasai yousei-san」, or Vegetable Fairies, are a cross of animals and vegetables. Each fairy’s unique design truly captures the characteristics of the model animal and vegetable. Some of them are cute and adorable looking, while some look cool and smart.

Ponkichi also makes an effort to give them personalities of their own, like the Lettuce Tasmanian Devil who is kind to children but aggressively bites on Mr. Cauliflower’s head! Look at him rip off a chunk of cauliflower and the screams by Mr. Cauliflower (bottom left of image below). 

Twitter Link 

What is the inspiration behind the Vegetable Fairies?

子供でも分かりやすくて、野菜について楽しく知るきっかけになる。そんなキャラがいたら良いなと思い、手がけました。
Easy for children to understand, and a fun way to learn about vegetables. It would be nice if there were characters like that I thought, so I started to work on it. 

The driving goal behind Ponkichi’s creation of vegetable fairies is children’s education about animals and vegetables, and more importantly, to make eating vegetables more appealing to children who are picky about vegetables. At the same time, Ponkichi hopes that by relating the vegetable fairies, who are friends of all children and are helped by humans, to animals, children will develop compassion for living animals. If you notice, children are often depicted cuddling and playing with the vegetable fairies.

Ponkichi’s background of growing up at a farm and working as an illustrator at a game company was also a great inspiration. When designing the vegetable fairies, she thought back to how some children hated eating vegetables despite how nutritious they are, and if there was any way she could make vegetables more appealing. 

And, to make remembering the vegetables fun, Ponkichi thought it would be a good idea to make the vegetable fairies like a game. With many different “characters”, with easy to remember names, and their nutritional values as “powers”. 

How are Vegetable Fairies born?

All vegetable fairies carry memories of being helped by humans. In difficult times, lonely times, when they were injured, or close to death, they remember receiving help from kind humans. And so, their strong feelings of gratitude transform them into fairies when they cross the rainbow bridge. 

They turn into Vegetable Fairies to return the favour to humans by giving nutritional vegetables to humans. Whenever you taste the deliciousness of vegetables while eating, it could be that there is a Vegetable Fairy nearby. 

#おやさい妖精さん が生まれる お話です。
おやさい妖精さんは新鮮な野菜を届けてくれたり、調理の際に食材からポンって抜け出すので安心ですよ🐈🧄

The story of how #Vegetable Fairies are born.
Vegetable fairies deliver fresh vegetable, they pop out of the ingredients when being cooked, so rest assured [you won’t harm them when eating]

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Super Adorable Vegetables & Fruit Fairies

Ponkichi draws an illustration once a week, and posts it every Sunday. As of September 2, 2022, Ponkichi has drawn 135 types of Fairies as stated in this Tweet. 

If you are wondering how the combination of animal and vegetable is chosen, in many cases, it is by puns. Yes, puns. You will know what I mean below as we meet some of the vegetable fairies. 

So Many, So Cute! 

Twitter Link

Root Type Vegetable Fairies

The onomatopoeia for the cry of a fox is “kon kon (コンコン)” in Japanese. So naturally, the animal paired with daikon (radish) and renkon (lotus root) is a fox. This is the same for the Fairy Turnip Pig, the onomatopoeia for a pig’s oinking in Japanese is “bu- bu- (ブーブー)”, coupled with the Japese word for turnip being "kabu (かぶ). 

Twitter Link

Cat Vegetable Fairies for International Cat Day

A compilation of Cat Vegetable Fairies for International Cat Day. And yes, their names are all puns of the vegetable name in Japanese. 

• Garlic Cat Fairy (Nyanniku), from “ninniku”

• Eggplant Cat Fairy (O-nyasu), from “nasu” 

• Pumpkin Cat Fairy (Nyanpukin), from “pumpkin”

• Bell Pepper Cat Fairy (Pi-nyan), from “pi-man” 

Twitter Link

Various Types of Fruit Fairies

Not just vegetables, Ponkichi has expanded to fruits. These are Fruit Faries (果物妖精 kudamono yousei), and they are adorable! My personal favourites are the Durian Angora Rabbit, Grape Rabbits, and Blueberry Java Sparrow. Which ones do you like? 

Twitter Link

And, if you’re curious about the sizes of the fairies, Ponkichi has created this image for us to get a feel of their sizes. 

Twitter Link

New Ventures, Other Types of Fairies

Not just vegetables and fruits, Ponkichi is also venturing into other territories. Here are some interesting ones. 

Cooking Fairies - Rabbit Boiled Gyoza

Fan Heater Cheetah Fairy

Futon Pig Fairy

and more. I look forward to other interesting creations!! 

Collabo Cafe: Vegetable Fairies Kitchen [Tokyo Harajuku & Hyogo Kobe]

Image Credit: おやさい妖精さんKitchen

Ponkichi’s vegetable fairies are really popular in Japan with merchandise and gacha figurines. And now, for a limited time only, there is a collaboration cafe event to be held in Tokyo and Hyogo prefectures! Don’t miss your chance to try Vegetable Fairies themed food, take photos, and buy some merchandise! 

• Event Period : February 1 to March 14, 2023
• Opening Hours : 11:00 ~ 19:00
• Venue : Galaxy Harajuku 2F (〒150-0001　東京都渋谷区神宮前1丁目8-9)

• Event Period : February 4 to 26, 2023
• Opening Hours : 11:00 ~ 23:00
• Venue : Collabo Hit Cafe Kobe Shop (〒651-0096　兵庫県神戸市中央区雲井通6丁目1-15 三宮オーパ2 8F)

To Close

Are you a fan of Ponkichi’s vegetable fairies now? Follow Ponkichi’s Twitter for more adorable vegetable and fruit fairies. 

You can also get the Vegetable Fairies Illustrated Book (おやさい妖精とまなぶ野菜の知識図鑑) that covers 49 types of fairies. The book is very affordable at only 1,100 yen for a brand new paperback copy, considering it is fully coloured and has over 100 pages. I also personally like the book a lot because it not only introduces the vegetable fairy, but also its nutritional value, popular dishes that use it as an ingredient, and a cute or comical scene featuring the fairy. The book is also useful to Japanese learners for reading practice as many kanji have furigana (hiragana over the kanji). It is available in paperback and digital format, and can be purchased on many platforms including Amazon. 

Photos provided courtesy of Ponkichi ぽん吉 (Twitter).