Turns out trying to recreate the Starfield sandwich collection but with plushies is really hard

It's very funny to me that of all the things Bethesda Studios showed off about Starfield before launch, it was the pile of sandwiches collected by self-proclaimed space snack thief (and also game producer) Jamie Mallory that took the internet by storm. In the cargo hold of her platypus-shaped ship, she has a specific table for piling up all the sandwiches she's stolen from other ships and bases all over the galaxy, and there's a lot of them. The oddly petty yet wonderfully silly nature of her thieving brought me great joy too. So much so in fact, I decided to start my own little collection of items in Starfield – Mr Wilby and his friends.

Now, if you haven't stumbled upon my friend Mr Wilby or his associates Parsecpooch, Galacticat, and co, then let me enlighten you. These particular pals aren't fellow human spacefarers, but rather a series of plushies I've discovered throughout my travels. It started when I wandered back home to my parents' rather fancy but also quite messy apartment in New Atlantis. It turns out there are plenty of perks to picking the Kid Stuff Starfield trait – not just your parents awkwardly turning up at Constellation to embarrass you – including introducing me to the first of Starfield's plushie range. 

Walking into my character's childhood bedroom not only nabbed me a boost pack capable of letting me carry more weight in Starfield, but also let me find Parsecpooch for the first time. This chubby white dog plushie wearing a comically large space helmet was just lying on the floor, and when I picked it up it emitted a little jingle – the kind that wouldn't be out of place as an idling sound in a gaming arcade. I thought it was a one-off, a little secret prize for anyone silly enough to want to send their in-game parents 2% of their earnings each week, but then I turned around. There on a shelving unit was a long-limbed black cat plushie with ridiculously long legs, wearing an orange space suit, and an equally bulbous helmet. There was something about its crossed eyes and derpy whiskers that made Galacticat even better than my original pooch scoop. 

It wasn't until much later that I actually found Mr Wilby, who is a squat green alien plushie with a wobbly mouth that rocks some blue shorts Winnie-the-Pooh-style. I found him in a locker deep within a Spacer Base during Sam Coe's loyalty mission alongside another Parsecpooch, a third plushie called a Xenosnuggle, and a hamper's worth of apple chunks. Each one has its own signature noise when you pick them up and the detailing is so sweet and intricate that the community is now petitioning to make them into real-life merch. I had to find more. 

I want to Xenosnuggle with you 

They're seemingly incredibly rare, but my plushie empire was growing, so I stored them away in a small cupboard in my captain's quarters on my ship – a former Spacer vessel I'd managed to commandeer a few hours earlier – wanting to gather a few more and find the right place before really starting my plushie pile. 

But then, disaster struck. In my quest to find all the best Starfield doors – another fixation of mine – I swapped around a few modules in my ship in a space dock, added a crew quarters here and a workshop there. I even found a larger captain's quarters that felt more appropriate to the overall theme of my ship. I didn't even think about the fact that deleting that old captain's quarters would mean also deleting my plushie flock. You can imagine my sadness when I entered my new captain's digs to find not only the plushies gone, but the entire cabinet too. Devastation. So many lost to the great ship procrastination of September 2023. 

It's taken me some 30-odd hours to replenish my small collection, and now I still only have six in my quarters. I even managed to find a new friend called Cuddleosaur thanks to heading back to my parent's place in an attempt to replace Galacticat and Parsecpooch (but to no avail). Reddit was the first place to tell me there are different colored variants of the plushies too, and I've since discovered – thanks to stealing from the iconic Skyrim grandma herself – there are size variations as well as my quest to become the best plushie thief in the Settled Systems continues. 

So while my pile may be humble now, and it may have taken me far too long to release you can manually place items by holding down A until they float and then rotate them with the triggers, I'm dedicated to my quest. If anyone discovers another plushie hoard you'll let me know, right? I miss Galacticat.

There isn't even any point collecting sandwiches, because Starfield players have been devastated to find Skyrim's cheesy healing tradition is no more