DEATH TO TOY FADS

[cinema guy]

when the Teacher Barbie ... didn't have underwear.

Wow, slutty teacher Barbie. I want one of those in my stocking.

[tamezin]

I don't think anything like that had every happened before - maybe parents weren't as indulgent/guilt ridden/insane(?) in the 50's to 70's to try so hard to get their kids the exact toy

By the 80s we had close to a 100% saturation rate of television in homes and today we have near 100% saturation of computer access. Advertisers in the 80s realized direct marketing to kids during prime time hours worked amazingly well. Who better to get lincoln out of the iron pinch of a grubbing miser than Daddy's wittle girl.

Guilt may play a small part, with so many families with both parents working and the sky rocketing divorce rate. Parents who could, over-indulged at gluttinous porportions. Sadly I didn't get any of the good stuff, we were always poor.

[Sauletekis]

Yes, we remember it well.

I'm afraid it may happen again this year. The suits don't care. Who gives a damn how many peons die as long as they can sell millions of dollars of crap and get their bonuses this year?! Let's put them on the front lines, holding back the buckling front doors and frantic mobs and see how quickly they change their tunes.

This... I didn't hear about this in the UK, but gods... that makes for some incredibly distrubing reading.

I don't think my parents could be bothered with toy fads, and I don't remember being bothered as a kid, with the one possible exception on POGs, those crappy milk cap things. They were all the rage at school for about 6 months.

[sanchopanza65]

I never go for Christmas presents on Black Friday. Instead, I go for the wicked awesome bargains, if I'm lucky. Last year, we got a big HDTV at Best Buy for about 400 bucks, if that. There were some other good deals, that we got midmorning. My dad'll head out to the stores at opening, but doesn't bother with the huge lines or madness.

[draftermatt]

My sister collected (and still does somewhat) Beanie Babies.

That was it for Fads in my house growing up. She had a cabbage patch, but not till the late 80's early 90's.

I had some pogs, but I never understood what the point of the game was so I never went nuts. In fact I bought most of them myself with birthday/Christmas money.

I've only been off on black Friday once, and we waited to go out till about 9-10. No lines, still decent prices.

I might go out early this year, buy myself a TV and go back to bed.

[mischugenah]

Back during the cabbage patch craze, when my sister and I were still pipsqueaks (2 and 4 years old, respectively) my grandmother managed to get each of us a Cabbage Patch Doll for Christmas. Now, don't get me wrong, we loved those ugly little things, played with them for years until they fell to pieces. But the thing is, we had NO CLUE what they were when she got them for us! I mean, c'mon, we were toddlers, we'd never even heard of them before, and we certainly didn't know there was a craze going on! I told my grandmother this years later, and she about died laughing and told me that she had been so proud that she'd found them for us, she should have realized that we were too young to understand the craze.

Which is kinda my point: a lot of these fads are for toys for toddlers. Come on parents, do you really think your 4-year-old HAS to have this toy? Are they even going to care?

[Marszenka]

I think a lot of little kids are going to be unhappy Christmas morning unless they decide to want something more generic. I follow the news on MSN's website, and recently I remember reading an article along the lines of "Manufacturers are afraid of overproducing like they did last Christmas, so don't be surprised if there are a lot of toy shortages. Hot items to watch out for are..."

And yes, Zhu Zhu pets were on the list. I'm sorry it's making your job crappy.

On the other hand, I have to give props to these people for getting Christmas presents so far in advance! I'm the procrastinator sort who waits until the last minute >m<

[Merriweather]

Advertisers in the 80s realized direct marketing to kids during prime time hours worked amazingly well. Who better to get lincoln out of the iron pinch of a grubbing miser than Daddy's wittle girl.

Guilt may play a small part, with so many families with both parents working and the sky rocketing divorce rate. Parents who could, over-indulged at gluttinous porportions. Sadly I didn't get any of the good stuff, we were always poor.

Yeah, fads weren't normally purchased for my daughter, either. As I said, I got lucky to order her a CPK from the catalog before things went so crazy, and regular prices weren't bad. I was a divorced parent at the time, and my daughter was amazed to get one, as she'd heard how hard they were to get and how much some people paid (she was 8 at the time). She never expected expensive toys (or designer clothes, etc), so it was great when I got lucky enough to get her something great that she didn't expect to get. But even in flusher times, I'd never pay more than normal price for a fad toy (and that's assuming normal price was reasonable).

The Cabbage Patch Kids were the last fad I really noticed. Can't recall anything later in the 80's being all that big, and we lived in the UK during the 90's, so I missed Beanie Babies, Tickle Me Elmo and Furbys - have only heard about those crazes. Now my daughter is grown, I don't pay much attention to the toy fads. I do have a granddaughter now, but my daughter is much like me, toys are based on what she likes, what she's known to actually play with, and nothing is worth outrageous amounts of money.

[WouldYouLikeToBuyAPhone?]

Welcome to the iPhone debarcle my friend. I feel your pain.

[Andara Bledin]

The closest I have ever gotten to wanting a fad toy was that I wanted a Barbie when I was little. I didn't even care which one. I got a PJ (her younger cousin) instead, and that was just peachy.

My brother cut her to bits with a kitchen knife years later. I only know this because he dropped a piece of one of her heels when he went to cleanup, and I later found the rest of her under a tree in the back yard. She would be worth up to a couple grand these days, if I'd still had her.

Otherwise, I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the mindless herd who absolutely must have the hottest new thing merely because it's the hottest new thing.

Not when I suspect the manufacturer is holding back on supply because they know they have a hit on their hands and this way they can drive up the hype.

Note: a manufacturer wasting money and effort on not selling product is astronomically unlikely. Storage space is just too expensive to waste it on storing merchandise for fictional gains since they're going to sell out of all the buggers they can manufacture whether they put them out now or next month.

First major Christmas toy fad that I can remember with enough lack of availability to cause normal human parents to turn into crazed monsters was the Cabbage Patch Kids, back in the early 80's.

At least those hideous little dolls were somewhat individualized, so each one was as unique as a mass-marketed stuffed toy could be.

My sister got attacked by some woman over a shipment of beanie babies; both were going for the same one and the woman pulled my sister's hair back to get to it first. Ugh!

You know, that woman could get her kids a REAL hamster and teach them the responsibility of caring for another life. Nah, sounds too responsible...

One of my co-workers was threatened over one of the mini Beanies at McDonalds. The other woman wanted to "take it outside."

I don't like hamsters. I had a pair when I was little, and they weren't really the type of pet that's good for a little kid. If I were to get another rodent for a pet, I'd go with a rat (clever and sociable) or a Guinea pig (or cavy, docile and socialble). Although I have a friend that breeds chinchillas.

^-.-^

[Dreamstalker]

There's never anything being offered by any of the local stores that would would make me get up at Oh-Dark-Thirty to stand in line and fight other people for them.

I confess that I did venture out at 5 AM two years ago for the Zelda Edition DS. The store was a small "entertainment" store in a relatively small mall (one anchor store), so it wasn't that bad; the line was actually organized and civil, and upon hearing that the store had only gotten three of the Zelda boxes a stranger who was going to get the last two actually gave one up to me (that was unexpected and awesome).

Other than that, I've never seen anything on Black Friday that would entice me to get up that early.

[KnitShoni]

Wow. I have a 16 year old, a 14 year old, and a 4 year old. How did I not manage to hear about these things until this thread?

We've never done the toy fad thing. If aunts/uncles/grandparents want to, more power to them, but we will not.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I was never a toy fad person, I suppose the closest I came was wanting a Playstation 2 when they first came in the 2000 Holiday season. My dad tried to find one, but was unable to, he actually gave me an IOU for a PS2 as a christmas gift but I didn't mind waiting.

As an adult I don't really buy into them either. I don't think it's right we should be teaching our kids to put such an insane value on material things.

I have seen some of the toy fad craziness first hand back in 2007 when the Wii first came out and was impossible to find. Our first shipment sold out on launch and we didn't know when we'd get more, we just knew it would be between monday and thursday. Unbelievably the same 15 or 20 people showed up on EVERY one of those days hoping to score a Wii. In the end, we only got 7 in.

On a later shipment we got some we had to hold for a weekend sale, the total allocation? TWO consoles per store. After I swiftly sold those two at opening, a woman demanded our corporate number because apparently she was number two in line and someone else shoved her out the way and got the Wii she should have had. I have no idea what corporate did about that, if anything.

I also saw several mobs at the Wal-Mart electronics section when shipments came in. It never ceases to amaze me how vicious people get over things like this.

And the phone calls, my god the phone calls. I swear I was getting over 20 calls a day about Wiis and it was always

"No we're sold out"
"No we don't know for sure what day we are getting more or how many are coming"
"No I can't hold any"
"No you can't prepay for one over the phone and have us hold it."
"No I cannot accept a bribe."

I admit though, I managed to get ahold of a Wii myself that holiday and flipped it for $535. That's right I practically doubled my money because someone just had to have one of these things for Christmas. I should note the Wii in question was NOT purchased where I worked, since we are forbidden from reselling items we buy with our discount.

[Binky]

oh god I hated this!

Tamagotchis was the fad when I worked at Kmart. It was hell. Every day someone would come in asking for them. We would get about 20 MAX every shipment. And this was once a month tops. If we were lucky every fortnight.

But the same day we got them, they were gone! This was due to backorders, and randoms who were lucky to be in the same day they came in. I got one, I was over it in about an hour or so. I still have it hahahaha but it's very much dead

I also got a few when they originally came out. Don't know how I lost them...but I'm pretty sure someone had sticky fingers at school and they were lifted.

[mikoyan29]

I don't like hamsters. I had a pair when I was little, and they weren't really the type of pet that's good for a little kid. If I were to get another rodent for a pet, I'd go with a rat (clever and sociable) or a Guinea pig (or cavy, docile and socialble). Although I have a friend that breeds chinchillas.

^-.-^

My cat would love a hamster, I think....