So, I played the ME trilogy back around 2015 and have recently started my second playthrough! I adored the games back when I first played, and COVID seemed like a great excuse to do it again. Currently in the middle of LOTSB in ME2 (first time btw, and it is amazing).

Anyway, in the time from 2015 to now, I’ve realized that I really like fan merch or just merch in general for games and shows that I like! Recently I’ve bought stickers, charms, prints, character pillows, plushes, and a bunch of other things from the various fandoms that I have been a part of in the past year.

So, with my second playthrough, my love for ME was revived, and my interest for ME merchandise, fan or official, peaked!

My search began last night, and it was wildly disappointing. I was pretty thorough too! Etsy, Redbubble, Society6, Amazon, Ebay, Made by Fans for Fans, personal stores, and Biowares merch partners. Nothing really stood out, or resembled the fan merch that I might get for one of my other fandoms like Fire Emblem, RWBY, My Hero, etc.

I was specifically looking for anything Liara T’soni based, more specifically a plush, but there was hardly anything of substance aside from a couple stickers, a character pillow that wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, and an enamel pin that’s out of stock! I was surprised, because in my opinion, anyone could milk the shit out of fun merch with all of ME’s amazing crew.

The question I’m building up to is, did I just miss the fandom merch boom when the games were initially released, or was merch just not as big of a thing like it is today?

Digital art has become way larger in the last 10 years, and that created the artist alley type merchandise you see at cons or online today that I mentioned briefly! Hell, when Fire Emblem: Three Houses was released this last year, you could find at least one or more plushies being made for almost ALL of the characters. People are still selling those plushes lol.

So I wonder if that contributes to the difference and scarcity, because fan merch was maybe not as a big of a thing when the ME trilogy first released.

Anyway, sorry that was pretty lengthy, but thoughts and ideas would be appreciated! And if you know of places with ME merchandise that I did not already mention in the above, send it my way! But like I said, I was thorough. And yes, I have the Grunt plush. No, I do not want the Mordin or Hanar one lol :)

tl;dr: Did I miss the train and all of past ME merchandise is just sold out/gone? Or is it just a different time with a different type of fanart/merch that ME fans never got into?

(Last bit, if anyone cares, do you think a remaster would potentially start a fan revival, and as a product of that, new merch, official and fan?)