A cup-rim figure hangs on the lip of a glass by a hooked limb and stays there without clips, magnets or adhesive. Fuchiko on the Cup introduced the idea and the Putitto series extended it to licensed characters. Between them they are the most recognised thing we have ever made, and they are also the hardest to engineer.
The difficulty is that cups are not standardised. A thin tumbler rim is under two millimetres; a mug is closer to six. A hook shaped for one will rock on the other. The working range is set by the depth of the hook and by where the mass sits behind it, and getting both right means moving the centre of gravity backwards until the figure wants to fall inward rather than outward.
That constraint drives the poses. Fuchiko sits, leans and hangs because those are the shapes that put weight on the correct side of the rim. A standing figure cannot be a cup-rim figure. When a licence asks for a character in a pose that will not balance, we redesign the pose rather than the mechanism, and we have turned down arrangements where no pose would work.
Care is simple. Wash before first use in lukewarm water, keep the figures out of the dishwasher, and do not leave them hooked on a hot drink for long periods — heat softens nothing structurally but it will dull a painted finish over time. The figures are decorative; they are not tableware and they are not meant to sit in the liquid.
Complete sets of the older runs are boxed rather than blind, which is what you will find on our cup-rim shelf. Single Putitto boxes still follow the capsule rule: the line-up is printed, the design inside is not.
