Manufacturers Pay Toy Stores To Say Something Is In Demand
It all started back in the early 80's when the maker of Cabbage Patch kids were an actual hot seller. Toy companies looked on in awe at the lengths parents would go to get a toy for their child. From that point on there have been lists of the hot toys to get and dutifully parents go out and get those toys. It turns out that much like the lists of top steak houses you see in airline magazines the lists are paid for in the form of kickbacks to toy stores. The higher the kickback the more a toy store will talk your product up when the local news shows up. The parents see the report on television and think their kid must want the toy. Some parents talk to their kids about it and that leads to other kids talking about it at school and asking their parents for the toy because they want to be the same as Frankie.
The reality is that none of the top toys in demand for Christmas on these lists comes close to the top ten in sales of toys but what it does is get them noticed and sold and makes the manufacturer get a little more room on the shelves the next year.
20 comments:
Frankie says relax.
LOL at the iPad being a "hot toy" for kids. Marketing ploy or not, I'll stick to my Tickle-me-elmo, thanks. Toys for kids should not be portals to the vast world of pornography.
Business kickbacks? GASP!
I disagree. Furby was THE toy for Christmas 1998. Everyone wanted a fucking Furby. I should know, I was in 3rd grade.
Couch potatoes are missing from the list.
Laser tag. The Christmas I worked at Toys R Us, we could not keep the damn things in the store. And, oh the joy, dealing with the parents who were convinced we were just hiding them in the back of the store for ourselves.
Protip: Toy stores WANT TO SELL YOU THERE PRODUCT. They are not hiding it in the back until you leave. Really. I promise.
Gay,but they can be too lazy to go back and look. Thats freaking annoying.
This no secret at all. How stupid fo they think consumers are?
@auntliddy - Pretty fucking stupid actually. Which is why they use these techniques that do end up working. Sadly
I bought three Cabbage dolls in the back room of a big store during the height of the insanity. I was so nervous and kept thinking the FBI was gonna burst in. I'm paranoid.
Any parent who listens to a list rather than their kids to tell them what they want is an idiot. My parenting magazine has been insisting for two Christmases now that Lalaloopsie is "it" for girls, but my daughter and her friends just think it's stupid. And although my daughter does turn around and say "I want that for Christmas" to just about every commercial she sees, just by PAYING ATTENTION I can find out what she really wants. What a concept.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I am the expert here about toys. You could say what VIP is to celeb gossip I am to the toy section lol
Yes, stores will put hard to find toys back but only if they are going to have a big sale on them (Think Black Friday) and a lot of the times the employees buy them before they even see the shelves because they know they can get a lot for them online.
Then you have the stores that buy too much of a certain product that isn't really part of the line that screws up how they order the real thing. What I mean is, take GI Joe and Transformers for instance. Toys R Us and Walmart both ordered massive amounts of the movie merchandise, even though the movie toys aren't considered part of the line by collectors. Most stores still have a lot of the movie stuff left even now, 3-4 years later that didn't sell. So instead of marking that stuff down to get rid of it, they keep it on the shelf and don't order the new products. The only place to get it now is to go online and then the stores bitch and moan because they lose customers to places like Amazon.
Then you have stores where people are just too lazy to put new stock out. A Walmart near me, just two months ago, finally put out the McFarlane Baseball figures from 6 years ago. They had to sell them for the clearance price of .50 each. I was able to get some really good ones and sell them for about 25-30 bucks each.
The hottest toys of the year are in reality, the hottest toys of the year. The problem is they keep production lower so that they stay that way. Look at the Nintendo Wii back in 2006. Nintendo did the same thing so that the Wii would seem to be in demand even if it only sold 1/5 of what it did. A glut of product on the shelves makes people think that nobody wants it and that it's crap.
TL;DR version: If Jr. wants something that seems to be impossible to find, it's either because the stores didn't order it, the company didn't produce enough or it's laying in the back of a stockroom but it's easier to leave all of last years stuff on the shelf.
Do you even HAVE a life? O. M. G.
Says the lady who comments on Every.Fucking.Post..........multiple times
Says the lady who comments on Every.Fucking.Post..........multiple times
Says the lady who comments on Every.Fucking.Post..........multiple times
Says the lady who comments on Every.Fucking.Post..........multiple times
Generally, it's because they know it's not in the back. The hot toys hit the floor as soon as they're priced. They use to call and warn us when a new shipment of Laser Tag came in, so we could vacate the area while the parents clawed over it.
Oh, and your child does not NEED a blonde haired/blue eyed Cabbage Patch doll only.
@Cee Kay. I'm pretty sure I like the Lalaloopsys more than my four-year old
>> The problem is they keep production lower so that they stay that way.<<
Argh, isn't that the truth? Or they rush to production and 90% of each shipment doesn't work right. We had to ship back at least 80% of the Teddy Ruxpin toys (and not just because we punted the cases down the stairs) because they didn't work right out of the box.
How much do you hate the talking toy displays? When there were no customers around, we use to throw things at Cricket to try and break the display so she would SHUT THE HELL UP.
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