A macaque Japanese man abandoned by his mother at the Ichikawa Zoo receives a stuffed orangutan from Ikea. From that point, we have witnessed a new example of the power of the internet to exalt the emotional and the absurd: the global stock of the doll runs out, the shares of the Swedish brand skyrocket and a $30 million cryptocurrency is born. The Punch story is an instruction manual for success in the era of the attention economy.
Who is Punch? Punch was born on July 26, 2025 at the Botanical Zoo in Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture, outside Tokyo. Its mother was a first-time female who gave birth during a heat wave and showed no caring response toward the calf. The zoo chose to raise the animal manually, separated from the group, something that left it without the physical contact essential for the social development of these animals.
Dolls. At the first signs of anxiety and isolation, the caregivers made a practical decision: to give him a stuffed orangutan from Ikea, the Djungelskog model, covered in synthetic fur and with very long limbs, ideal for Punch to hug and carry. Apparentlythe monkey adopted the toy as a maternal substitute: he carried it with him everywhere, protected himself with it when he was scared, and rarely let it out of his sight. It was not a strange decision on the part of the zoo, on the contrary: in macaques, physical contact is a need as basic as food (studies on the subject They date back to 1958)
Return home. In January 2026, the process of gradual reintegration of Punch into “Monkey Mountain”, the enclosure where his peers live, began. The first months they were difficult: The other macaques rejected him when he tried to get closer. A video widely circulated a few days ago on social networks seemed to demonstrate the rejection: an adult dragged Punch across the floor, which aroused the immediate empathy of millions of people. The zoo had to clarify that the behavior was part of the natural socialization process, not sustained aggression.
Later, one of his caregivers would confirm that the animal had begun to receive grooming from an adult in the group, an unequivocal sign of acceptance in the social hierarchy of Japanese macaques.
Two booms. The phenomenon of Punch going viral has had two successive explosions. One in early February, when an X user shared a Punch video playing with his stuffed animal. Another in the middle, when it was seen the video of the alleged assault. Preonto began to spread this latest video, which reached 30 million views. Punch fan-art sprouted and the hashtag #がんばれパンチ (something like #AguantaPunch, which was translated and circulated in English) was born.
The zoo statements in Xexplaining that the adult was acting as a mother to another offspring, not as a mere aggressor, asking the audience to interpret the situation as part of the natural socialization process, further amplified the scope of the story. Shortly after, a summary video of the entire process with the structure ‘How it started / How it’s going’ and which finally showed how Punch was accepted, it achieved more than three million views in a single day.
Teddy theme. The Djungelskog plush has been in the Ikea catalog for years. It costs 16.99 euros in Spain, measures 36 centimeters and its name literally means “jungle forest” in Swedish. Until February 2026, it was just another article among the thousands in the children’s section of the chain. In less than a week, stocks have been sold out in Japan, the United States and South Korea without the company having to invest a single euro in advertising. Resale exploded until reaching 350 dollars.
Illustration by chimiwangillustration
Ikea has seen a unique opportunity to get some publicity without too much investment. On February 17, Petra Färe, president and director of sustainability at Ikea Japan, personally visited the Ichikawa Zoo to deliver 33 stuffed animals and material for the children’s area. In addition, it adapted the name of the product on its platforms, now having the description “Punch’s comfort orangutan.” An artificially irreplicable advertising bombshell.
And a cryptocurrency. On February 7, 2026, when Punch videos began to become popular, someone launched a token called $PUNCH on Solana’s Pump.fun platform. The launch price was practically zero. In just fifteen daysthe token rose more than 80,000%, reaching an all-time high of $0.04847. The market capitalization was close to $30 million and the daily trading volume exceeded $20 million at peak activity, placing $PUNCH as the the asset with the highest daily profit on CoinGecko.
A bombshell that of course is already fading after the corresponding speculative explosion (“the token bubble map was ‘too perfect’ to be organic”, one analyst said). Another momentary internet fever that should warn us about how memes have worked for some time now: emotional outburst, spontaneous growth and fever of those involved to get something out of the phenomenon. Nothing new under the sun, but along the way we have seen some beautiful videos of a macaque hugging a stuffed animal. Something is something.
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