December 12, 2025 • 49 mins
Ever since Cabbage Patch Kids came along in 1983, there’s been an annual holiday frenzy around one particular toy – the must-have Christmas toy of the year. But what makes a toy a must-have toy? Josh and Chuck investigate (and kick off the holidays).
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Happy Holidays, everybody. This is Chuck here with one of
our episodes for our Stuff you Should Know Well Days
of Christmas Toys playlist. We decided to put this together
that'd be a fun little holiday idea to kind of
gather up some of our toy centric episodes and release
them this December or all packaged uff. So here we
are with I think this is the first one, either
(00:23):
the first or the second one on the list, and
the episode title is what makes I must have Christmas
toy If you want to know, listen in and find out.
Happy Holidays, everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of Iheartradios
How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, there's Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
You Should Know Early Christmas Edish.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, we're kicking it off fairly.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Like the rest of the retail world, do you.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Uh? Yeah? Man, this year you could find Halloween, Thanksgiving
and Christmas stuff in stores at the same time, like
it was just the most normal thing in the world. Yeah,
but you don't follow me on Twitter, and you should.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I'm not on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, that's what I'm saying. You should get on Twitter
to follow me.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
No, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But at seven thirty in the morning on November one,
the day after Halloween, I tweeted Merry Christmas. I got
a lot of hate back for it.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, what do you like Twitter?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Do you just poke people like that?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah? Pretty much, just troll I gotcha. Yeah, well that
was my plug for Twitter. Oh yeah, yeah, here we go.
So let's see back in nineteen eighty three, Chuck, you
were twelve, okay, I was seven. You didn't have a
cabbage Patch kid, did you.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, there's a story there if you really want to know.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I think you've told it before, but let's have it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Well, we bought my sister one of the very first
little people is what they were called before they were
cabbage patch kids, right in Helen, Georgia, when they were
handmade by Xavier Roberts, who I recently learned stole that
idea from a woman and took it as his own
(02:24):
and made millions of dollars off of her idea. Yeah,
I mean I wanted to do maybe we'll do a
short stuff about that. I wanted to do a full
length episode.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
But we I mean We definitely talked about that, because
I think we have talked about like must have toys
of the past, and maybe last year's or the year
before is Christmas edition.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, and we had she got this doll. Its name
was Chuck, which was kind of funny because that's my name.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
That's so funny.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And it was a big deal. I think it was
like the number seventy something or eighty something made and
now it's worth a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Does she still have it?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Huh? Oh, that's great. And We'll finish with Cabbage Patch
Kids and then I'll take issue with you.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
So go ahead, Okay, I know what you're gonna take
issue with.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Oh I don't know if you do know, so let.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Me let me start, all right. So, back in nineteen
eighty three, Cabbage Patch Kids were like the must have
toy of the Christmas season for sure, and from what
I can tell, they were the first must have Christmas toy. Ever.
Now that's not to say there weren't extraordinarily popular toys
(03:31):
at around Christmas time before nineteen eighty three. Star Wars
very famously offered their early Bird Certificate package, which was
basically an empty box that said at some point in
the future, you will get Star Wars figures instead of
this empty box.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
One of the great great marketing gems of all time.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, so that was a thing all the way back
in nineteen fifty two. Mister potato Head was a hot
toy that year. Robert the Robot was a hot toy
in nineteen fifty four. And when you say hot toys,
it's tough to overstate that like Robert the Robot had
T shirts in the fifties. I didn't even know people
wore T shirts in the fifties. Yeah, he was in
(04:13):
a movie like these were big deal toys. But my
premise is this, this is my thesis. Okay, this is
my own so I'll take the hit if it's wrong. Sure,
But that in just the same way that there were
hit movies like The Godfather or like Ben hur before
Jaws came along. There wasn't such a thing as the
(04:37):
summer blockbuster until Jaws came along and made the summer
blockbuster a thing. There wasn't such a thing as the
must have toy of Christmas until the Cabbage Patch Kid
came along and made that a thing. Okay, so what
issue are you going to take? I can't take it
any longer. You're driving me crazy.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Well, I don't think it was. I don't think it
was Cabbage Patch Kids that was the must have toy,
the first must have toy. That's what I take issue with.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Well it was the first Well.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I don't know. I mean, I'm just speaking from my
own life fan, and I definitely think Star Wars counts
because if you can sell an empty box to a
kid for Christmas, then that's pretty strong position as a
must have thing. And by the way, if you're listening,
the reason they sold empty boxes is because they didn't
know Star Wars was going to be a big thing,
(05:28):
So Kenner didn't have as many of these made in
the run up to the film release pre Christmas. So
they got caught with their pants down and they realized
that there was a big demand, a huge demand. Okay,
they sold like forty million of.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
These, No, forty million boxes, I'm trying to yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
I don't know forty million Star Wars toys Okay at
that inside of a year, So.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Okay, yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
And did you know that you can even buy these
empty box kits on eBay.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Now, oh yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I saw one listed for fifteen hundred bucks.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I'm not at all surprised.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
And then, just very quickly, I also want to point
out that the biggest, most in demand toy of my
young life was the Atari pac Man cartridge. Oh boy,
that was in nineteen eighty two. Okay, that sold seven
million cartridges.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Okay, great, great, the numbers don't lie. That's a big,
big number, seven million, forty million. You can toss big
numbers out all day long. But let me ask you this, okay,
for that empty box of Star Wars, for that Atari
pac Man cartridge, did a woman have her leg broken
because a crowd trying to get their hands on those
things turn violent? Or before you answer, in addition to that,
(06:44):
did a department store manager in Charleston, West Virginia have
to arm himself with a baseball bat to defend himself
from his very customers who are trying to get to
the Star Wars empty box or the Atari cartridge? I
would guess that the answers.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
No, Well, I think human behaviors have changed over the years.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
From nineteen eighty two to nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, I guarantee you I could find one violent incident
about the Atari cartridge.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I'll bet you couldn't.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, you know, there wasn't then, because there was, they
met the demand.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Okay, so that's a big part of it too, right,
so there have been Let's just move on from this.
The cabbage Patch cabbage Patch kids if not worthy first,
which they were?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Did you have one?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah? Yeah, Weberdino, you had a cabbage Patch kid. Yeah.
I ended up taking his head off and giving him
a mohawk as I grew older.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
But because and not to be not to be too
like gender binary here, but I didn't know a lot
of boys that wanted the cabbage Patch kid.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
What I've always broken the mold, chuck.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Well, sure, no, there's nothing wrong with it. I grew
up with William wants a doll on free to be
um me, so I get it. But that's why I
just don't know. I think it must have Christmas toy
would be one that everybody wants.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, as far as I knew, everybody wanted a cabbage
Patch kid.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
All right, we'll just put this one to bed.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Like a cabbage Patch kid with a mohawk that you adopted. Yep,
so right, well, that was a big thing. Like there
was there were some hallmarks to the idea of a
must have toy that were surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids. Violence
is one, right, There was a lot of buzz that
was picked up by the media and one of the
(08:28):
ways that that was generated was by I think Kalco,
who owned Cabbage Patch Kids at the time, sent these
dolls directly to reporters. That was a big one, and
the fact that there was not enough supply to meet
the demand. These things kind of came together to make
Cabbage Patch Kids and must have Christmas toy and this
(08:49):
has been carried on as a tradition ever since then,
Ever since that very very first time in nineteen eighty
three with Cabbage Patch Kids. There were Nintendo's that dominated
back in nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, and nineteen
ninety three years in a row, Nintendo had three different
products that were like the must have Christmas toy.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Oh yeah, that first game console, Huge Dude, the Game
Boy Huger it felt like. And then of course in
nineteen ninety possibly the best game gaming system of all
time if you look at just relative to the time,
the Super Nintendo console. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Man. N sixty four was pretty great with GoldenEye.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Oh god. N sixty four was great.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, with GoldenEye. I mean like it would have been,
you know, fine on its own, but the fact that
GoldenEye existed was the thing that made N sixty four to.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Me, that game blew my mind.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah. It was great, especially the Battle Royale where you
could play your friends. Oh man, that was fun.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, we called it hunt and Chase.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
I used to get so mad. Yeah in those like
that's the only time I ever got mad playing video games,
because I don't do that thing where you play online
and you can, you know, you can exact revenge on people.
So I did not take it well when my friends
snuck up behind me and shot me in the head.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Right, Yeah, that was always a bummer. What about Tickle Meomo?
That was a big one, thanks to Rosie O'Donnell.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I was a little old for that. Oh really, that
was in my mid twenties.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I had one.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Oh yeah, well you were in high school.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Not really, yeah, this was nineteen ninety six. This is
post high school even, But this was such a craze
that there was that characteristic violence where a Walmart employee
was trampled while he was trying to restock the display
late at night, I believe. But he had a pulled hamstring,
injuries to his back, his jaw, his knee, a broken rib,
(10:37):
a concussion, and it continues on like, I haven't read
about any violence from hatche moles, but from twenty sixteen
to twenty eighteen, they were the, if not one of
the top must have toys of the year.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And so.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Hatch a moles how come?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Because you have to put in a in a dish
or a bowl that you eat out of, and you
have to leave it there and leave it there and
leave it there, and then it hatches into a garbage toy.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Real. Oh so my experience is that it's they're pretty,
They're good.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, So you like your hatcheml Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Why are you talking? Is it like animatronic?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Is it animatronic?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I'm talking about hatchamles.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, it's okay. So I don't know anything about the dish.
I just my experience is from my niece, and I
don't remember any dish.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Oh wait, this isn't the Are we talking about two
different things? This is the thing you put in water.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
No, no, no, electrocute yourself when you touch it.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Okay, maybe I'm thinking of something else.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
This is like an animatronic thing that hatches from an egg,
but like you have to like teach it and train
it and raise it and give it attention and everything.
It's a bit like the tamagochi, but like an animatronic pet.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Oh, I got you. Now, I'm thinking of the thing
that you It's an egg that you put in water
and after a few days it hatches into a garbage toy.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, no, that's that's not this. Hatch mules are much different.
So there's this tradition of a must have Christmas toy
and you can find all you want about them every
year because they're everywhere all the time, and the media
reports on this kind of stuff, and they're on TV,
and there's ads, and there's like social media stuff. Now,
but there's like a really big question that doesn't have
(12:19):
a lot of press associated with it, and certainly no
studies or anything that I could find. But there's a question, Chuck, like,
how does a toy become a must have Christmas toy?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Well, let's take a break and we'll get to the
bottom of it. Right after this.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That was quite a set up, I think so. So
back in the day when you were shopping for Christmas,
if you were a kid or a parent, it didn't matter.
You knew exactly what to do. You knew exactly how
to do it. There was no frills, no nothing. It
was all just holiday joy and the goodness of the
Christmas holiday season.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
That's right, That is correct. And you learned what you
wanted if you were a kid from two things, Saturday
Morning cartoon commercials and whatever your catalog was. The Seers
wish book is certainly one service. Merchandise catalog was another
big one for us.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, there's a Montgomery Wards catalog.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, of course. And you put this together and you
introduced me to a website called wishbook Web that might
as well be called time suck dot com.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah. It's pretty great, isn't.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
It, Because someone has gone through and scanned Is it
just Sars wishbooks?
Speaker 3 (14:03):
No, No, it's Sears, J. C. Penny and Montgomery war right,
And then I think there's the occasional what store is
that here or there?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Right? They have scanned these entire wishbooks up to nineteen
ninety six.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Which from everyone knows is the cutoff day for nostalgia.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
That's right from the earliest days of nineteen thirty three.
And boy, let me tell you, dude, and I know
you know this because you've done it. If you go
through and spend a few minutes clicking through these things
in the years where you were like six to twelve
waves of nostalgia wash over you like John Hodgman would
(14:40):
succumb to these waves. Yeah, I know, it's amazing. I
remember some specific pictures I remembered the I mean the
NFL section alone brought tears to my eyes and I
forgot how much they hyped football back then.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
You just can't stop crying.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
It was crazy that the clothes, the alarm clocks, the
clock radios, the tech section. It was just it was
off the charts for me looking through this, I almost
did nothing else today.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, I know it is. Wishbook web is pretty awesome.
Like somebody went through and scanned every single page of
these gods several hundred pages each, catalogs for decades worth
of catalogs. Is it is God's work?
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And just to get laughs by like seeing the two
four year olds posing in bathrobes, it's really, really funny.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Right, one's got like a pipe that blows us.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Like, God, this is just amazing. What a great website.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
So wishbook web is kind of preserved how you used
to figure out what you wanted for Christmas, which was
you go through these wishbooks or these catalogs or whatever,
and then you tell your parents, who dog ear them,
maybe drop some hints. It was the correct way. The
twenty first century has a kind of an updated version
of that, but it still kind of follows the same
(16:00):
general contours right where there are lists still and like catalogs,
but now it's not just department stores that have like
the market cornered on them. Like that's actually kind of
gone away. It's very tough to find a department store catalog.
I believe Myers still does that. I think they're kind
of like a Midwestern Target. Oh really yeah, and they
(16:22):
have a toy catalog that they put out still, I
believe to this year.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Well now you get the restoration hardware Christmas.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Right or ikiya. Yeah, but they but there's lists everywhere,
and it seems like every retailer has one or all
the major retailers have one, and depending on where it's
coming from, it's some are more trustworthy or above the boards,
or or objective than others when saying like these are
the must have toys, right, Like, on one end of
(16:52):
the spectrum, you have like third party websites and publications
and organizations like the Spruce, Her Toy Insider, Her Toys, Tots,
Pets and more, and they actually evaluate the toys when
they make their lists.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, I mean these it's just different now. And I
don't think it's nostalgia like thinking things were better back then,
but it was it seemed easier and better to let
a kid sift through of catalog and pick out stuff. Then.
I guess what are you supposed to do today, like
sit down with your kid at one of these websites
and at look at the top twenty hot toys and
(17:29):
say what do you want? Like, I don't know how
it works these days.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I don't know. Maybe instead of like dog earing the pages,
you send your parents' links.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I'm sure you do, actually you know. Yeah, But I
mean if your kids are too young to be on
the internet, I'm not sure how to do it. Because
I could hand my four year old a catalog and
say pick out some stuff, it'd be great. But I'm
not going to say, hey, just log onto the spruce
and go scroll down and see you find something you like?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Right, stay out of their parents section. What do I mean?
What do you do? You have a you literally have
a kid, Chuck, what do you do?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I don't know. I mean we buy. We just buy
things that we think she might like.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
So there's like a whole world out there of like
lists and websites that show toys and stuff that she's
unaware of. Oh sure, oh wow, she's got a big
surprise ahead of her. I gets So that's great. I'm
excited for Actually.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, but I mean you definitely feel like you're sort
of stabbing in the dark as to like, I mean,
a parent can go through and look at those lists,
but you know, kill me.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Well, a lot of people are excited about that kind
of thing. They're like, good, this is yeah. I don't
have to like go to the store and stand there
and be like what are we getting here? You could
go to some website or USA Today or the Today
Show or whoever is partnering with some of these trusted
sites like Toys, Tots, Pets and More or Toy Insider,
and like they kind of take a lot of the
(19:00):
US work out of you. They're basically saying, these are
what experts are saying your kid is going to want.
If you go by this, you will score a home
run with your kid.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah. I think my problem is I don't know what
is bought and what is real reviews because as you
have dug up and I didn't even know this. Of
course they do this. If you go on Amazon, they
you know, you can spend two million bucks as a
retailer to be on their you know, on their top
list or whatever.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
So okay, yes, what I saw though was that they
you spend that money to nominate them, to nominate your
toy for their consideration to include on the list.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yes, for a nomination.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I don't know how the process works, but yeah, I saw.
I saw like the headline say you pay two million
for a slot, but if you read the finer print
and saying you pay two million for them to even
consider it, and then I guess I don't know how
they curate it. They actually kind of keep a close
lid on it. But it generated like one hundred and
twenty million dollars in revenue fram just to be on
(20:02):
their list of hot toys. For the year.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Walmart they charge ten grand a month per toy to
be on their Buyers Picks toy list, and like you
point out here, they Walmart starts their list in August,
and you've got to wonder, is that because they're making
ten grand.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
A pop right of the stuff per month?
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah. They released there's in late August, before Labor Day even,
and like this isn't like a, hey, we think these
toys are going to be hot this year. It's here's
the hot list of holiday toys, and Target released theirs
at the beginning of September. I think Bullseye is the
name of their mascot dog mascot spuzz Mackenzie basically.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, bully bulls.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And I couldn't see if they charge for placement or
how they compile it or anything like that, which actually
makes me suspect that they don't, because there's plenty of
ink about Amazon and Walmart's lists and how they charge
for them, and the fact that there's no one for
Target makes me think either they're really keeping a lid
on it or else they actually don't charge for that.
But so there's kind of two lists where if you're
(21:08):
a parent not need to ask. Yeah, you need to
ask and dog people in camp people. You need to ask,
where is this list coming from? And if it's coming
from a third party site, go look up the third
party site and they will tell you and they're like
about us section how they determine what toys or what
And if you really want to get that information, that's fine.
But even if Amazon or Walmart or even if Target
(21:31):
charges for placement on their lists, just the very fact
that those things are on their list is going to
make them among the hot toys of the season. So
it's like a self fulfilling or self paying prophecy.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, I mean, I guess anytime you look up something
on a major retailer website, those first few things are
sponsored and they say sponsored in little letters.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Oh, sometimes they don't really hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, I mean sometimes it's kind of hard to discern
whether or not you're looking at the real top thing
or the sponsored thing.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Right, And I think, like with the gift lists in particular,
I don't believe that they say that these are sponsored.
I think it's just like here's the hot list according
to Amazon.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Well, let's talk a bit about marketing in general around
the holidays that you know, it's a science in a way,
and they have found out through science that happy people
buy more. You are not everyone's happy around the holidays,
but they definitely as marketers, play on the idea that
you are happier around the holidays, and so you should
(22:35):
be in the buying spirit. Definitely. When you're talking about kids,
that is the case. They pummel children with ads. There
was one study here University of Hertfordshire counted one hundred
ads and a three hour Saturday morning kids slot Christmas.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Hundred one hundred and a three hour slot. That's a
lot of ads, it is. And then and of course,
you know, children are on more than one screen these days,
so they're also getting ads on you know, when they're
watching YouTube or whatever, or just on kids websites. There's
ads everywhere. I can't remember what episode we really kind
(23:15):
of dove into that advertising their children.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Oh man, I think it was about advertising for children,
like must have been. That was the sole, you know goal.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
So so the idea is that just the holiday season
itself puts most of us in a pretty good mood,
and advertisers say, oh well, if we release ads that
are holiday themed, we'll be able to kind of tap
into that goodwill and good mood and make you nostalgic
or feel good about things. And so by doing that,
(23:44):
we'll be able to kind of tie our brand or
our product to that holiday, that holiday sensation, and you'll say, oh,
I do want to go buy that because it makes
me think of being a kid at Christmas time. That's
really basic stuff. I mean, like that's everywhere. You can't
get away from that in the holiday season. And there's
(24:05):
not even necessarily anything wrong with it. It's just it's
just basic marketing and advertising one oh one when it
comes to holiday advertising.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, and the other thing we mentioned earlier in terms
of marketing, and this is also marketing one on one
is about scarcity.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
If you have a toy that there is a limited
amount of, that is when you're going to find people
trampling each other to get there, because people are motivated
by fear. And if you know that a toy is
a must have and there aren't many of them and
they're going on sale at a certain time, it is
frightening what a parent, some parents might do to secure
(24:43):
that toy.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yes, so this is finally we've reached the key ingredient. Right,
You've got lists of toys that are promoted and advertised
and maybe even show up with their own articles in
the media. Then you have the fact that we're already
kind of primed to buy because it's the holiday season,
we're in a good mood. But when you add that
scarcity marketing, it ramps it up to a totally different level.
(25:06):
And when you have a must have toy that is
hard to find, like you said, people will do very crazy, violent,
mean stuff to get it. And there's a lot of
reasons why even if you're not willing to like throw
an elbow to get a toy, you might still be
willing to camp out at four am waiting for you know,
a twenty four hour retailer to restock their supply of
(25:29):
this so you can buy it. That's unusual behavior and
the reason why it all comes down to scarcity marketing
and the idea that we have a fear of missing out,
a fear of social embarrassment, a fear of our kids
not loving us as much as they could had we
gotten them this toy, and that all of these things,
the scarcity marketing is the real driver that kind of
(25:53):
hypercharges must have toy frenzy.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, and it's not you know, just toys. You've seen
everything for You make a great point about Pappy van
Winkle whiskey.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Oh, I should say that's from marketing Land. A guy
named Jacob Bodsgar wrote an article on marketing Land where
he cited that, and the Disney Vault is really good examples.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, Disney Vault, it's another great one. They were very
famous for not just saying like here's all the movies
we've ever made that you can buy on VHS, all
in one big package. They would release them every every
now and then, and you know you had a limited
time to get them. And I wasn't really hipped all this,
but my dad and his wife were way into the
(26:34):
Disney stuff, and you know they were adamant about making
sure they filled out the entire collection and really kept
up with when they were going to be released. And
what a big deal that was.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah, that was a big one. And Bodsgard makes a
point like by making them limited and available also only
for a limited time, with years sometimes a decade in
between times when you can buy these things, it create
it's this like frenzy to go buy them. And it
also makes them like a treasured part of that person's home,
(27:07):
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, and you can also fake out the public a
little bit and mislead them on the scarcity. You might
have a lot of the stuff and just kind of
lead the public to believe, like, now you better go
get one right now because they may not be around
next week.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah. The people who made hatchimles spin Master. Hatche moles
were really hard to find in I think twenty sixteen,
seventeen and eighteen, and spin Master was basically accused of
purposefully using scarcity marketing. And for their part, they said, hey,
we were totally called off guard three years in a
row by the the you know, the popularity of hatche moles,
(27:45):
and other people were like, that's that's bs. You can
totally ramp up production pretty fast. Another must have toy
was fingerlings. Remember them from like last year the year before.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
They were like little monkeys or sloths or dragons or
whatever that would hang on to your finger And they
were little finger sized robots that would like blink and
blow kisses and do all sorts of cute airf They weren't.
They were cute instead of uncanny because they went kind.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Of the words finger sized robots together, so.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Right, they would cut your throat while you slept. But
they were caught unaware. Even though they really tried it
hard to make them hit through social media, they were
still surprised when it actually happened. But they ramped up production.
They brought a third factory in China online. They went
from shipping via cargo boat to air transport to get
(28:36):
supplies here faster, and they were able to ramp up
and meet demand pretty quickly. So the idea that Hatchemll
just couldn't possibly do that really smelled to a lot
of people like they were purposefully using scarcity marketing.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah. Scarcity, I mean it's an interesting concept because you
see it everywhere. You know, they have restaurants that you
know here in Atlanta, Homan and Finch had the Homan
and Finch perg or that like one day a week,
like we'll sell a hundred of them starting at ten
pm on this night and then everyone's like, oh my god,
what is in that burger?
Speaker 3 (29:09):
People would line up to get the block. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Or this is a nice little tidbit here that you
dug up about supermarket experiments.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Yeah, that's from an article from market Watch by Mark Elwood.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, on that one, it's amazing. Even putting up a
sign for soup that says limit twelve per person will
make people be like, oh, I should I should probably
buy twelve of these, right for whatever reason, they might
stop making their chicken noodle soup.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Right or in this case, it was soup that was
on sale, so who knows what the price is going
to go back to.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
You know, well, that's true.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So one of the other things that scarcity produces is
this idea that there are haves and have nots. Right,
So if the idea that you're fearful of missing out
or fearful of your kid not loving you isn't enough,
there's a whole other cognitive bias of being a have not,
of being left on the cold, which I guess is
a fear of missing out. But there's also the benefit
(30:09):
of being a have where if you're talking about like
a fingerling, which is a fifteen dollars toy, but people
were crazy for those things that either last year or
the year before, like just about anybody can afford this
fifteen dollars toy. So even if you're like a have
not throughout the year, you're down on your luck, maybe
you're unemployed or you're underemployed, things just aren't going your way.
(30:33):
You could still camp out and wait for that late
night restocking the fingerlings and get your kid that toy,
and for that time you are a have, and maybe
even somebody with a much higher social status than you
couldn't get that fingerling, which makes it all the more sweet.
And then let's also not forget. Like we said, this
(30:53):
is during the holiday season, so emotions like count extra
So to be a have when you're normally not during
the holiday season because you gotta must have toy is
exponentially increased.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, it's a big deal because it's it. Even if
it's just emotionally equal for a brief period of time,
it can be a big deal for somebody. I say,
we take our final break here and then we come
back and talk about the worst people toy flippers right
(31:26):
after this. All right, so I set up the worst
(31:54):
people are toy flippers. Obviously there's a lot of really
really bad people in the world. And I'm being somewhat highperbolic,
but I do think somewhat the idea of buying, targeting
and buying a lot of must have toys to sell
later for profit on eBay makes you a pretty rotten person. Yeah,
(32:15):
go ahead and lay that judgment down.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Some people do. I reserve judgment for the ones who
do it professionally. I think if you are a person
who is just trying to augment your your own like
holiday expenses, and you are foreseeing a lack of supply
(32:37):
ahead of time, I say more power to you.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, I'm not into it. I feel the same way
about ticket scalpers.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Yeah, it's exactly. I mean it's the same thing basically.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, it's it's buying up a bunch of things sometimes
and this is completely gross and awful. Using bots, Yeah,
that's the pits too, especially for con tickets, like when
bots buy up all the best concert.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Tickets, especially our tickets.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah exactly, I.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Think anybody uses bots on ours?
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Well, probably not. But actually, stuff you should know is
we've seen very few bad examples of people trying to
overcharge for a sold out show. More times than not,
it's a fellow listener that's like, hey, just come along,
you can sit next to me for face value, or
I'll even give it to you.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, that happens quite a bit. And yeah, I mean
there's only been a couple where somebody's like, you know,
a million dollars and of course they didn't sell it. No,
but yeah, we haven't run into that. Mostly the problem
is from ticket outlets just charging ridiculous fees on top
of our ticket price.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Well that makes us mad, and you all should know
we don't have control over that. No, we're the Eddie
Vedder of podcasting.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
But if you ever find yourself in a situation where
you got shut out of a stuff, you should know
show and your option is to not go or to
pay like a ridiculous amount, just send us an email
put you on the list.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Oh god, Chuck, Wow, you just opened some floodgates.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I mean, there's very few list spots, so it's not
like you.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Know, right now, you just started a must have toy
frenzy for the list. Look of what you've done.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Oh, let's get back to bots. These bots are so
savvy that they can they can buy out, they can
have hundreds of credit card numbers on file because sometimes
they'll have like a limit to how many things you
can buy. They are all these shortcuts and ways to
bypass all of these safeguards put into effect, including captures.
(34:37):
They will hire foreign workers to sit around and type
in the captures to get through security.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Which I mean, if there is anything that says holiday
spirit more than that, I can't think of it.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
But these bots can can sometimes buy out something in
the second that it goes up online for a regular
human being to say, oh, all right, they've released the
tickets or the doll.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Gone, because they'll so what they'll do is they'll go
on to like retail websites and figure out what the
unique idea is for the product that they're looking for.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
That's the real art.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
It'll start right, it'll start monitoring that page because people
who build these pages will put them out and just
won't you know, kind of rely open the curtain for
hours ahead of time. So the bot will have the
page targeted and just keep refreshing it hundreds of times
a second until that sale goes live, and they will
have ordered scores of these things, or dozens or hundreds
(35:36):
whatever however many it can before you can even if
you're sitting there refreshing your browser, between the time it
takes to refresh your page, they will have wiped the
place out using these bots, and then if you're truly sophisticated,
you probably have another set of bots who take your
inventory and then put it up for sale at some
exorbitant price on Amazon or eBay or Craigslist or something
(36:00):
like that.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, the worst people.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
So like, you don't even have to do anything, you
just stick your bots on it.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah. I stand by it, even for the enterprising person
who I just I don't know. I don't have a
big problem with someone making money off of someone else's
misfortune to not have been able to get that themselves.
I don't think it makes someone scrappy or enterprising at all.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Hey man, that's that's fine.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, I'll die on this hill.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Okay, that's fine. So if you are one of those
people that Chuck hates and you want to be enterprising,
there is an article written by Lisa Smith. It's Uninvestipedia
and it's called the Guide to reselling toys at Christmas
for extra money Oh God, which is very innocuous. Then
there's some tips actually that make a lot of sense.
If you want to do this, Do you want to
(36:48):
go over them? Are you going to remain mute? You
can go over them so you could talk to parents
if you wanted to write, Chuck, Yeah, that's right, Josh.
Good idea there, Because they know what kids want. You
could talk to kids them, which makes sense. I mean,
just go right to the horse's mouth. I've always said
the same thing, Josh. You can talk to Santa. I
thought this was pretty enterprising. Like imagine if you are
(37:11):
trying so what you're trying to do here is to
identify what toy you want to buy as early ahead
of time as possible, so that you can have identified
the hot season, the hot toy of the season, and
bought them before the demand really struck. So you talk
to mal Santa's, hang out in stores. You can talk
to cashiers, stock people, all that stuff, because not only
(37:34):
will they know what toy you need to look out for,
they'll know when these new supplies are coming in. Maybe
slip them a Starbucks card or something like that with
ten bucks on it as a thank you, but be
sure to deduct that from your bottom line.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Sure bribery. De duck that bribery, right.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
And then you can actually hang out in chat rooms.
There's entire websites that are dedicated to this kind of
stuff that are you know that say like here's the
toys we're looking for. I spotted some at this you know,
Walmart or whatever. This this stock guy said that Walmart
replenishes home on Thursdays at ten. There's a lot of
(38:10):
stuff you can do if you really wanted to put
the leg work in.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Great or you could put all that energy into doing
something worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Right, I know what you're talking about. This is the
like the Michael Larson approach to the holidays, the man
who got no whammies on pressure luck.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Oh, I had no problem with him.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Okay, this is virtually the same thing. It's not it's somebody.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Gave Michael Larson, wasn't There wasn't some father who didn't
have much money that you know, overpaid for a doll
to make his little girl happy at Christmas time. Michael
Larson didn't do that.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Right, he would have, though, I'm sure of it.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Oh goodness.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
So that's what you can do if you want to
flip toys and ruin the holidays. As far as Chuck's concern,
that's right, and that is that is a big part
of the competition of people who will go buy out stocks.
Like you're not really facing them nationwide unless you're talking
about people who release spots onto websites or whatever. But
they are out there and they do. They do actually
create competition and help drive that frenzy even further, because remember,
(39:22):
what's behind must have toys of scarcity marketing, and if
there are people out there actively contributing to the scarcity,
that's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Here's what I want to hear from. I want to
hear from some women listeners who let's say you go
on a on a on a date from a dating
app and you sit down across from your date and
you're like, what do you do? And he goes, I'm
a toy flipper, and she's like, what's that? He goes.
You know, around Christmas time, I go out and I
buy like tons of toys that I know little kids
(39:52):
really really want, and then I mark them up so
I can make a lot of money off their parents
who may not be able to afford it. You're right,
and just tell me how that day goes from there.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yeah? Can it? Does it have to be a man
and a woman? Can it just be anybody?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
It can be anybody. But you know, I think the
guy that does this is the guy that I just
did that voice.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
For, who's apparently from Jersey.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Sure, they're all from New Jersey. Okay, and I love
New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
So I feel like we've learned a lot here. Yeah,
we've talked about, you know, how a toy becomes a
must have toy of a season usually has to do
with some sort of some combination of advertising and buzz
marketing as long or as well as scarcity. The flippers
get involved, I think, and I want to back this up, Chuck,
(40:39):
there's not a lot of stuff out there on this.
This all had to be brought together. This is kind
of one of those rare stuff you should know theses. Yeah,
about what makes a must have toy must have toy,
But I think it's I think it holds up.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Should we talk about some of the big toys of
this year?
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yes, So those lists that are out there, this hell me.
Actually we put a bunch of well that's the point.
That's we're trying to help you and all of the
toy flippers out there. So actually this is for all
the parents. This will help you get a drop on
the toy flippers because I guarantee there are very few
toy flippers listening to stuff you should.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Know now, Because we have good people in our audience.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
So all those lists that are out there now, we
kind of compiled and cross referenced them. A number of
them lists from Target, Toys, Tots, Pets, and more. That's
just one Amazon, the Today Show, Toy Insider, the Spruce
Crazy Coupon Lady who had a post about toy flipping, Walmart,
(41:39):
and New York Magazine. All of those lists we looked
at and we found ones that appeared on at least
a couple if not more, And one of them, the
first one, appeared on basically every single list that we saw.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yeah, this one, the bloom doll. B lu me nothing
to do with the rested development, but it is this
is something that that my daughter might like. Apparently this
is another thing you add water to and it blooms.
But this is I don't think it hatches from an egg.
I think this doll just like grows like a chia
(42:11):
pet mite.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Kind of, and like the hair that grows is I
can't tell. It looks like some sort of foam or
styrofoam or something, but it takes different shapes like pineapples
or cakes or something like that. And there's I think
twenty two different versions.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, okay, and thousand of them, I'll walk it up.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
Yeah. But they're also yeah, they're super affordable too, so
they're probably going to be the hot must have Christmas
toy of the year.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
As bloom Dolls hatchamulves are still around.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yeah, and there's one that's from How to Train Your
Dragon Toothless Dragon. Yeah, the Baby Dragon. They have a
hatchamble version of him.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
What else Shirley Barbie's on the list.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, Barbie has a dream plane whoa which I saw
in a couple of lists where yeah, it's a plane
for Barbie. There's like a snack cart and everything. Okay,
comes with the dog that I guess lives on the plane.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Great.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
There's also Lol Surprise. Have you heard of that? No?
I hadn't heard of it either until we started researching this.
But they're like a whole brand, and a lot of these,
including bloom Dolls and Lol Surprise, they tap into like
this whole trend of unboxing. Do you remember when we
talked about unboxing on YouTube where like people open toys.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, because our good friend Joe Randazzo did his Lego
Man unboxing videos that were right still to me. One
of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yes, great plug by the way, but they they still
do that, like they're still unboxing. It's a huge trend
and that's worked its way into toys so lol. Surprise
is kind of based on that, and there's like a
whole line of dolls but they're like into like DJ
stuff and fashion and all that, but they also have Surprise.
And there's also a kid named Ryan's World. I don't
(43:59):
think that's his last name, but that's his YouTube channel
and guarantee we talked about Ryan's World in that Unboxing
Toys episode. But he's got all sorts of toys that
are out where you like, you just don't know what
you're getting when you open the thing. It's just surprise unboxing.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Weird sub genre on YouTube of unboxing or I remember
we talked about the one where the lady's hands would
just play with things.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah, it was the Yeah remember she was like Peppa Pie.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, it's so interesting. I'll sell you the one on
the list though that I like that. I usually look
at the toys that I'm like, would I like to
play this with my daughter? That's important. I can't be
bored out of my mind you know.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Oh yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
And this lego make your own movie kit looks pretty
cool to me.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah. I was kind of heartened to see that on
on a couple of lists, you know, because it's like, this.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Is pop motion movies you can make.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Well, yeah, it's thoughtful, it's inventive. I love it. Yeah,
where it's it's yeah, there's They have a bunch of
different stages and backgrounds and props, including a banana. It's great.
So you learn how to make Are you gonna get
get her?
Speaker 1 (45:10):
That?
Speaker 3 (45:10):
I think you should like a movie anytime, buddy. All right,
can we make a flaming hoop out of a coat
hanger and do things with that too?
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Okay? And then the other one was the Fisher Price
Linco moles, which are super cute, including the smooth move sloth.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Hey, I'm down with Fisher Price.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Yeah, that's so huge, huge right now? Yeah, do you
remember Playmobile?
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Playmobile?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Remember that they were like the vaguely European kind of
action people, but there was nothing like violent or military
about them. They would explore or.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
I probably recognize them. I definitely know that name.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
You've seen it a million times right when you see
it y'all. I'll look it up and show it to
you later, but it's you'll see it and be like, yeah,
of course, wait right there, sure, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah. I was kind of a Fisher Price kid. But
you know we still have some of that stuff that
our daughter plays with that we had when we were kids,
like the barn and the boat, and you know, it holds.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Up, definitely does hold up. You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Got nothing else?
Speaker 3 (46:18):
You're gonna go buy a bunch of toys and flip them.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
I got nothing else except for twenty thousand Hatchimles in
my garage.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Man. Here's the other thing, though, Chuck Like, you're taking
a risk because you got to predict what the must
have toys, and if you guess wrong, you got twenty
thousand hatchimles that nobody wants.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Boy, I'd love to see that happen in real life.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
I guarantee it happened. So just keep an her out,
all right. If you want to know more about the
must have toys, there's basically nothing you can't know that
we haven't already told you. So just I guess go
get your kids some Christmas toys.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
That's right?
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Is that a good way to sign off.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
That's great.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
Okay, Since I said, is this a good way to
sign off? Time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
I'm going to call this from a teacher. We always
like to shout out our teachers and their students. Hey, guys,
just sending one of what I'm sure is among infinite
thank yous that you receive as a teacher who regularly
references knowledge I gain from listening to your show in
my class. My students, unwittingly and I are eternally grateful
(47:24):
for your work. They give a hearty laugh whenever I
steal your characters. Tuktook the wise proto Homo sapien and
erg the folly prone genetic defect to elucid eight points
about the evolution of early humans. I knew you wouldn't
mind my poaching. That's so if you think, John.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
You'll be hearing from our lawyers.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
John, you're the toy flipper of teachers. Just kidding. The
reason I'm writing is to say I think you should
not be discouraged by any listener mail you receive telling
you to keep your opinions to yourself. My favorite episodes
are the ones where either or both of you have
such strong feelings about the subject that you can't help
but go on a rant. Maybe it's just because I
agree with every rant, but I feel like it is
(48:07):
important to take a stand on issues that matter to
you and admit that you're human beings with a real
stake in the game. Thanks again, I'll keep listening as
long as you keep podcasting. That is from John Lubushkin.
So thank you, mister Lubushkin, and hello to your students
mister Lubushkin's class. Yeah, hi, guys, you've got a cool teacher.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Yeah, he does some pretty cool He's doing God's work,
teaching the next generation.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
I hope he doesn't work in a public school because
you're going to be like, you can't say God's work.
If you want to get in touch with this like
mister Lubushkin did, or if you're a toy flipper who
has an argument against Chuck's argument, we want to hear
from you, bring it. You can go on to stuff
youshould Know dot com and check out our social links,
and you can also send us an email to Stuff
(48:56):
podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How
Stuff works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Holidays, everybody. This is Chuck here with one of
our episodes for our Stuff you Should Know Well Days
of Christmas Toys playlist. We decided to put this together
that'd be a fun little holiday idea to kind of
gather up some of our toy centric episodes and release
them this December or all packaged uff. So here we
are with I think this is the first one, either
(00:23):
the first or the second one on the list, and
the episode title is what makes I must have Christmas
toy If you want to know, listen in and find out.
Happy Holidays, everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of Iheartradios
How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, there's Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
You Should Know Early Christmas Edish.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, we're kicking it off fairly.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Like the rest of the retail world, do you.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Uh? Yeah? Man, this year you could find Halloween, Thanksgiving
and Christmas stuff in stores at the same time, like
it was just the most normal thing in the world. Yeah,
but you don't follow me on Twitter, and you should.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I'm not on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, that's what I'm saying. You should get on Twitter
to follow me.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
No, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But at seven thirty in the morning on November one,
the day after Halloween, I tweeted Merry Christmas. I got
a lot of hate back for it.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, what do you like Twitter?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Do you just poke people like that?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah? Pretty much, just troll I gotcha. Yeah, well that
was my plug for Twitter. Oh yeah, yeah, here we go.
So let's see back in nineteen eighty three, Chuck, you
were twelve, okay, I was seven. You didn't have a
cabbage Patch kid, did you.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, there's a story there if you really want to know.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I think you've told it before, but let's have it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Well, we bought my sister one of the very first
little people is what they were called before they were
cabbage patch kids, right in Helen, Georgia, when they were
handmade by Xavier Roberts, who I recently learned stole that
idea from a woman and took it as his own
(02:24):
and made millions of dollars off of her idea. Yeah,
I mean I wanted to do maybe we'll do a
short stuff about that. I wanted to do a full
length episode.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
But we I mean We definitely talked about that, because
I think we have talked about like must have toys
of the past, and maybe last year's or the year
before is Christmas edition.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, and we had she got this doll. Its name
was Chuck, which was kind of funny because that's my name.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
That's so funny.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And it was a big deal. I think it was
like the number seventy something or eighty something made and
now it's worth a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Does she still have it?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Huh? Oh, that's great. And We'll finish with Cabbage Patch
Kids and then I'll take issue with you.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
So go ahead, Okay, I know what you're gonna take
issue with.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Oh I don't know if you do know, so let.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Me let me start, all right. So, back in nineteen
eighty three, Cabbage Patch Kids were like the must have
toy of the Christmas season for sure, and from what
I can tell, they were the first must have Christmas toy. Ever.
Now that's not to say there weren't extraordinarily popular toys
(03:31):
at around Christmas time before nineteen eighty three. Star Wars
very famously offered their early Bird Certificate package, which was
basically an empty box that said at some point in
the future, you will get Star Wars figures instead of
this empty box.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
One of the great great marketing gems of all time.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, so that was a thing all the way back
in nineteen fifty two. Mister potato Head was a hot
toy that year. Robert the Robot was a hot toy
in nineteen fifty four. And when you say hot toys,
it's tough to overstate that like Robert the Robot had
T shirts in the fifties. I didn't even know people
wore T shirts in the fifties. Yeah, he was in
(04:13):
a movie like these were big deal toys. But my
premise is this, this is my thesis. Okay, this is
my own so I'll take the hit if it's wrong. Sure,
But that in just the same way that there were
hit movies like The Godfather or like Ben hur before
Jaws came along. There wasn't such a thing as the
(04:37):
summer blockbuster until Jaws came along and made the summer
blockbuster a thing. There wasn't such a thing as the
must have toy of Christmas until the Cabbage Patch Kid
came along and made that a thing. Okay, so what
issue are you going to take? I can't take it
any longer. You're driving me crazy.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Well, I don't think it was. I don't think it
was Cabbage Patch Kids that was the must have toy,
the first must have toy. That's what I take issue with.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Well it was the first Well.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I don't know. I mean, I'm just speaking from my
own life fan, and I definitely think Star Wars counts
because if you can sell an empty box to a
kid for Christmas, then that's pretty strong position as a
must have thing. And by the way, if you're listening,
the reason they sold empty boxes is because they didn't
know Star Wars was going to be a big thing,
(05:28):
So Kenner didn't have as many of these made in
the run up to the film release pre Christmas. So
they got caught with their pants down and they realized
that there was a big demand, a huge demand. Okay,
they sold like forty million of.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
These, No, forty million boxes, I'm trying to yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
I don't know forty million Star Wars toys Okay at
that inside of a year, So.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Okay, yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
And did you know that you can even buy these
empty box kits on eBay.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Now, oh yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I saw one listed for fifteen hundred bucks.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I'm not at all surprised.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
And then, just very quickly, I also want to point
out that the biggest, most in demand toy of my
young life was the Atari pac Man cartridge. Oh boy,
that was in nineteen eighty two. Okay, that sold seven
million cartridges.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Okay, great, great, the numbers don't lie. That's a big,
big number, seven million, forty million. You can toss big
numbers out all day long. But let me ask you this, okay,
for that empty box of Star Wars, for that Atari
pac Man cartridge, did a woman have her leg broken
because a crowd trying to get their hands on those
things turn violent? Or before you answer, in addition to that,
(06:44):
did a department store manager in Charleston, West Virginia have
to arm himself with a baseball bat to defend himself
from his very customers who are trying to get to
the Star Wars empty box or the Atari cartridge? I
would guess that the answers.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
No, Well, I think human behaviors have changed over the years.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
From nineteen eighty two to nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, I guarantee you I could find one violent incident
about the Atari cartridge.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I'll bet you couldn't.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, you know, there wasn't then, because there was, they
met the demand.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Okay, so that's a big part of it too, right,
so there have been Let's just move on from this.
The cabbage Patch cabbage Patch kids if not worthy first,
which they were?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Did you have one?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah? Yeah, Weberdino, you had a cabbage Patch kid. Yeah.
I ended up taking his head off and giving him
a mohawk as I grew older.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
But because and not to be not to be too
like gender binary here, but I didn't know a lot
of boys that wanted the cabbage Patch kid.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
What I've always broken the mold, chuck.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Well, sure, no, there's nothing wrong with it. I grew
up with William wants a doll on free to be
um me, so I get it. But that's why I
just don't know. I think it must have Christmas toy
would be one that everybody wants.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, as far as I knew, everybody wanted a cabbage
Patch kid.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
All right, we'll just put this one to bed.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Like a cabbage Patch kid with a mohawk that you adopted. Yep,
so right, well, that was a big thing. Like there
was there were some hallmarks to the idea of a
must have toy that were surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids. Violence
is one, right, There was a lot of buzz that
was picked up by the media and one of the
(08:28):
ways that that was generated was by I think Kalco,
who owned Cabbage Patch Kids at the time, sent these
dolls directly to reporters. That was a big one, and
the fact that there was not enough supply to meet
the demand. These things kind of came together to make
Cabbage Patch Kids and must have Christmas toy and this
(08:49):
has been carried on as a tradition ever since then,
Ever since that very very first time in nineteen eighty
three with Cabbage Patch Kids. There were Nintendo's that dominated
back in nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, and nineteen
ninety three years in a row, Nintendo had three different
products that were like the must have Christmas toy.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Oh yeah, that first game console, Huge Dude, the Game
Boy Huger it felt like. And then of course in
nineteen ninety possibly the best game gaming system of all
time if you look at just relative to the time,
the Super Nintendo console. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Man. N sixty four was pretty great with GoldenEye.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Oh god. N sixty four was great.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, with GoldenEye. I mean like it would have been,
you know, fine on its own, but the fact that
GoldenEye existed was the thing that made N sixty four to.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Me, that game blew my mind.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah. It was great, especially the Battle Royale where you
could play your friends. Oh man, that was fun.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, we called it hunt and Chase.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
I used to get so mad. Yeah in those like
that's the only time I ever got mad playing video games,
because I don't do that thing where you play online
and you can, you know, you can exact revenge on people.
So I did not take it well when my friends
snuck up behind me and shot me in the head.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Right, Yeah, that was always a bummer. What about Tickle Meomo?
That was a big one, thanks to Rosie O'Donnell.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I was a little old for that. Oh really, that
was in my mid twenties.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I had one.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Oh yeah, well you were in high school.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Not really, yeah, this was nineteen ninety six. This is
post high school even, But this was such a craze
that there was that characteristic violence where a Walmart employee
was trampled while he was trying to restock the display
late at night, I believe. But he had a pulled hamstring,
injuries to his back, his jaw, his knee, a broken rib,
(10:37):
a concussion, and it continues on like, I haven't read
about any violence from hatche moles, but from twenty sixteen
to twenty eighteen, they were the, if not one of
the top must have toys of the year.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And so.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Hatch a moles how come?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Because you have to put in a in a dish
or a bowl that you eat out of, and you
have to leave it there and leave it there and
leave it there, and then it hatches into a garbage toy.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Real. Oh so my experience is that it's they're pretty,
They're good.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, So you like your hatcheml Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Why are you talking? Is it like animatronic?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Is it animatronic?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I'm talking about hatchamles.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, it's okay. So I don't know anything about the dish.
I just my experience is from my niece, and I
don't remember any dish.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Oh wait, this isn't the Are we talking about two
different things? This is the thing you put in water.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
No, no, no, electrocute yourself when you touch it.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Okay, maybe I'm thinking of something else.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
This is like an animatronic thing that hatches from an egg,
but like you have to like teach it and train
it and raise it and give it attention and everything.
It's a bit like the tamagochi, but like an animatronic pet.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Oh, I got you. Now, I'm thinking of the thing
that you It's an egg that you put in water
and after a few days it hatches into a garbage toy.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, no, that's that's not this. Hatch mules are much different.
So there's this tradition of a must have Christmas toy
and you can find all you want about them every
year because they're everywhere all the time, and the media
reports on this kind of stuff, and they're on TV,
and there's ads, and there's like social media stuff. Now,
but there's like a really big question that doesn't have
(12:19):
a lot of press associated with it, and certainly no
studies or anything that I could find. But there's a question, Chuck, like,
how does a toy become a must have Christmas toy?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Well, let's take a break and we'll get to the
bottom of it. Right after this.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That was quite a set up, I think so. So
back in the day when you were shopping for Christmas,
if you were a kid or a parent, it didn't matter.
You knew exactly what to do. You knew exactly how
to do it. There was no frills, no nothing. It
was all just holiday joy and the goodness of the
Christmas holiday season.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
That's right, That is correct. And you learned what you
wanted if you were a kid from two things, Saturday
Morning cartoon commercials and whatever your catalog was. The Seers
wish book is certainly one service. Merchandise catalog was another
big one for us.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, there's a Montgomery Wards catalog.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, of course. And you put this together and you
introduced me to a website called wishbook Web that might
as well be called time suck dot com.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah. It's pretty great, isn't.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
It, Because someone has gone through and scanned Is it
just Sars wishbooks?
Speaker 3 (14:03):
No, No, it's Sears, J. C. Penny and Montgomery war right,
And then I think there's the occasional what store is
that here or there?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Right? They have scanned these entire wishbooks up to nineteen
ninety six.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Which from everyone knows is the cutoff day for nostalgia.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
That's right from the earliest days of nineteen thirty three.
And boy, let me tell you, dude, and I know
you know this because you've done it. If you go
through and spend a few minutes clicking through these things
in the years where you were like six to twelve
waves of nostalgia wash over you like John Hodgman would
(14:40):
succumb to these waves. Yeah, I know, it's amazing. I
remember some specific pictures I remembered the I mean the
NFL section alone brought tears to my eyes and I
forgot how much they hyped football back then.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
You just can't stop crying.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
It was crazy that the clothes, the alarm clocks, the
clock radios, the tech section. It was just it was
off the charts for me looking through this, I almost
did nothing else today.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, I know it is. Wishbook web is pretty awesome.
Like somebody went through and scanned every single page of
these gods several hundred pages each, catalogs for decades worth
of catalogs. Is it is God's work?
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And just to get laughs by like seeing the two
four year olds posing in bathrobes, it's really, really funny.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Right, one's got like a pipe that blows us.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Like, God, this is just amazing. What a great website.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
So wishbook web is kind of preserved how you used
to figure out what you wanted for Christmas, which was
you go through these wishbooks or these catalogs or whatever,
and then you tell your parents, who dog ear them,
maybe drop some hints. It was the correct way. The
twenty first century has a kind of an updated version
of that, but it still kind of follows the same
(16:00):
general contours right where there are lists still and like catalogs,
but now it's not just department stores that have like
the market cornered on them. Like that's actually kind of
gone away. It's very tough to find a department store catalog.
I believe Myers still does that. I think they're kind
of like a Midwestern Target. Oh really yeah, and they
(16:22):
have a toy catalog that they put out still, I
believe to this year.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Well now you get the restoration hardware Christmas.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Right or ikiya. Yeah, but they but there's lists everywhere,
and it seems like every retailer has one or all
the major retailers have one, and depending on where it's
coming from, it's some are more trustworthy or above the boards,
or or objective than others when saying like these are
the must have toys, right, Like, on one end of
(16:52):
the spectrum, you have like third party websites and publications
and organizations like the Spruce, Her Toy Insider, Her Toys, Tots,
Pets and more, and they actually evaluate the toys when
they make their lists.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, I mean these it's just different now. And I
don't think it's nostalgia like thinking things were better back then,
but it was it seemed easier and better to let
a kid sift through of catalog and pick out stuff. Then.
I guess what are you supposed to do today, like
sit down with your kid at one of these websites
and at look at the top twenty hot toys and
(17:29):
say what do you want? Like, I don't know how
it works these days.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I don't know. Maybe instead of like dog earing the pages,
you send your parents' links.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I'm sure you do, actually you know. Yeah, But I
mean if your kids are too young to be on
the internet, I'm not sure how to do it. Because
I could hand my four year old a catalog and
say pick out some stuff, it'd be great. But I'm
not going to say, hey, just log onto the spruce
and go scroll down and see you find something you like?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Right, stay out of their parents section. What do I mean?
What do you do? You have a you literally have
a kid, Chuck, what do you do?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I don't know. I mean we buy. We just buy
things that we think she might like.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
So there's like a whole world out there of like
lists and websites that show toys and stuff that she's
unaware of. Oh sure, oh wow, she's got a big
surprise ahead of her. I gets So that's great. I'm
excited for Actually.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, but I mean you definitely feel like you're sort
of stabbing in the dark as to like, I mean,
a parent can go through and look at those lists,
but you know, kill me.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Well, a lot of people are excited about that kind
of thing. They're like, good, this is yeah. I don't
have to like go to the store and stand there
and be like what are we getting here? You could
go to some website or USA Today or the Today
Show or whoever is partnering with some of these trusted
sites like Toys, Tots, Pets and More or Toy Insider,
and like they kind of take a lot of the
(19:00):
US work out of you. They're basically saying, these are
what experts are saying your kid is going to want.
If you go by this, you will score a home
run with your kid.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah. I think my problem is I don't know what
is bought and what is real reviews because as you
have dug up and I didn't even know this. Of
course they do this. If you go on Amazon, they
you know, you can spend two million bucks as a
retailer to be on their you know, on their top
list or whatever.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
So okay, yes, what I saw though was that they
you spend that money to nominate them, to nominate your
toy for their consideration to include on the list.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yes, for a nomination.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I don't know how the process works, but yeah, I saw.
I saw like the headline say you pay two million
for a slot, but if you read the finer print
and saying you pay two million for them to even
consider it, and then I guess I don't know how
they curate it. They actually kind of keep a close
lid on it. But it generated like one hundred and
twenty million dollars in revenue fram just to be on
(20:02):
their list of hot toys. For the year.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Walmart they charge ten grand a month per toy to
be on their Buyers Picks toy list, and like you
point out here, they Walmart starts their list in August,
and you've got to wonder, is that because they're making
ten grand.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
A pop right of the stuff per month?
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah. They released there's in late August, before Labor Day even,
and like this isn't like a, hey, we think these
toys are going to be hot this year. It's here's
the hot list of holiday toys, and Target released theirs
at the beginning of September. I think Bullseye is the
name of their mascot dog mascot spuzz Mackenzie basically.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, bully bulls.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And I couldn't see if they charge for placement or
how they compile it or anything like that, which actually
makes me suspect that they don't, because there's plenty of
ink about Amazon and Walmart's lists and how they charge
for them, and the fact that there's no one for
Target makes me think either they're really keeping a lid
on it or else they actually don't charge for that.
But so there's kind of two lists where if you're
(21:08):
a parent not need to ask. Yeah, you need to
ask and dog people in camp people. You need to ask,
where is this list coming from? And if it's coming
from a third party site, go look up the third
party site and they will tell you and they're like
about us section how they determine what toys or what
And if you really want to get that information, that's fine.
But even if Amazon or Walmart or even if Target
(21:31):
charges for placement on their lists, just the very fact
that those things are on their list is going to
make them among the hot toys of the season. So
it's like a self fulfilling or self paying prophecy.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, I mean, I guess anytime you look up something
on a major retailer website, those first few things are
sponsored and they say sponsored in little letters.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Oh, sometimes they don't really hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, I mean sometimes it's kind of hard to discern
whether or not you're looking at the real top thing
or the sponsored thing.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Right, And I think, like with the gift lists in particular,
I don't believe that they say that these are sponsored.
I think it's just like here's the hot list according
to Amazon.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Well, let's talk a bit about marketing in general around
the holidays that you know, it's a science in a way,
and they have found out through science that happy people
buy more. You are not everyone's happy around the holidays,
but they definitely as marketers, play on the idea that
you are happier around the holidays, and so you should
(22:35):
be in the buying spirit. Definitely. When you're talking about kids,
that is the case. They pummel children with ads. There
was one study here University of Hertfordshire counted one hundred
ads and a three hour Saturday morning kids slot Christmas.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Hundred one hundred and a three hour slot. That's a
lot of ads, it is. And then and of course,
you know, children are on more than one screen these days,
so they're also getting ads on you know, when they're
watching YouTube or whatever, or just on kids websites. There's
ads everywhere. I can't remember what episode we really kind
(23:15):
of dove into that advertising their children.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Oh man, I think it was about advertising for children,
like must have been. That was the sole, you know goal.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
So so the idea is that just the holiday season
itself puts most of us in a pretty good mood,
and advertisers say, oh well, if we release ads that
are holiday themed, we'll be able to kind of tap
into that goodwill and good mood and make you nostalgic
or feel good about things. And so by doing that,
(23:44):
we'll be able to kind of tie our brand or
our product to that holiday, that holiday sensation, and you'll say, oh,
I do want to go buy that because it makes
me think of being a kid at Christmas time. That's
really basic stuff. I mean, like that's everywhere. You can't
get away from that in the holiday season. And there's
(24:05):
not even necessarily anything wrong with it. It's just it's
just basic marketing and advertising one oh one when it
comes to holiday advertising.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, and the other thing we mentioned earlier in terms
of marketing, and this is also marketing one on one
is about scarcity.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
If you have a toy that there is a limited
amount of, that is when you're going to find people
trampling each other to get there, because people are motivated
by fear. And if you know that a toy is
a must have and there aren't many of them and
they're going on sale at a certain time, it is
frightening what a parent, some parents might do to secure
(24:43):
that toy.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yes, so this is finally we've reached the key ingredient. Right,
You've got lists of toys that are promoted and advertised
and maybe even show up with their own articles in
the media. Then you have the fact that we're already
kind of primed to buy because it's the holiday season,
we're in a good mood. But when you add that
scarcity marketing, it ramps it up to a totally different level.
(25:06):
And when you have a must have toy that is
hard to find, like you said, people will do very crazy, violent,
mean stuff to get it. And there's a lot of
reasons why even if you're not willing to like throw
an elbow to get a toy, you might still be
willing to camp out at four am waiting for you know,
a twenty four hour retailer to restock their supply of
(25:29):
this so you can buy it. That's unusual behavior and
the reason why it all comes down to scarcity marketing
and the idea that we have a fear of missing out,
a fear of social embarrassment, a fear of our kids
not loving us as much as they could had we
gotten them this toy, and that all of these things,
the scarcity marketing is the real driver that kind of
(25:53):
hypercharges must have toy frenzy.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, and it's not you know, just toys. You've seen
everything for You make a great point about Pappy van
Winkle whiskey.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Oh, I should say that's from marketing Land. A guy
named Jacob Bodsgar wrote an article on marketing Land where
he cited that, and the Disney Vault is really good examples.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, Disney Vault, it's another great one. They were very
famous for not just saying like here's all the movies
we've ever made that you can buy on VHS, all
in one big package. They would release them every every
now and then, and you know you had a limited
time to get them. And I wasn't really hipped all this,
but my dad and his wife were way into the
(26:34):
Disney stuff, and you know they were adamant about making
sure they filled out the entire collection and really kept
up with when they were going to be released. And
what a big deal that was.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah, that was a big one. And Bodsgard makes a
point like by making them limited and available also only
for a limited time, with years sometimes a decade in
between times when you can buy these things, it create
it's this like frenzy to go buy them. And it
also makes them like a treasured part of that person's home,
(27:07):
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, and you can also fake out the public a
little bit and mislead them on the scarcity. You might
have a lot of the stuff and just kind of
lead the public to believe, like, now you better go
get one right now because they may not be around
next week.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah. The people who made hatchimles spin Master. Hatche moles
were really hard to find in I think twenty sixteen,
seventeen and eighteen, and spin Master was basically accused of
purposefully using scarcity marketing. And for their part, they said, hey,
we were totally called off guard three years in a
row by the the you know, the popularity of hatche moles,
(27:45):
and other people were like, that's that's bs. You can
totally ramp up production pretty fast. Another must have toy
was fingerlings. Remember them from like last year the year before.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
They were like little monkeys or sloths or dragons or
whatever that would hang on to your finger And they
were little finger sized robots that would like blink and
blow kisses and do all sorts of cute airf They weren't.
They were cute instead of uncanny because they went kind.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Of the words finger sized robots together, so.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Right, they would cut your throat while you slept. But
they were caught unaware. Even though they really tried it
hard to make them hit through social media, they were
still surprised when it actually happened. But they ramped up production.
They brought a third factory in China online. They went
from shipping via cargo boat to air transport to get
(28:36):
supplies here faster, and they were able to ramp up
and meet demand pretty quickly. So the idea that Hatchemll
just couldn't possibly do that really smelled to a lot
of people like they were purposefully using scarcity marketing.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah. Scarcity, I mean it's an interesting concept because you
see it everywhere. You know, they have restaurants that you
know here in Atlanta, Homan and Finch had the Homan
and Finch perg or that like one day a week,
like we'll sell a hundred of them starting at ten
pm on this night and then everyone's like, oh my god,
what is in that burger?
Speaker 3 (29:09):
People would line up to get the block. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Or this is a nice little tidbit here that you
dug up about supermarket experiments.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Yeah, that's from an article from market Watch by Mark Elwood.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, on that one, it's amazing. Even putting up a
sign for soup that says limit twelve per person will
make people be like, oh, I should I should probably
buy twelve of these, right for whatever reason, they might
stop making their chicken noodle soup.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Right or in this case, it was soup that was
on sale, so who knows what the price is going
to go back to.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
You know, well, that's true.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So one of the other things that scarcity produces is
this idea that there are haves and have nots. Right,
So if the idea that you're fearful of missing out
or fearful of your kid not loving you isn't enough,
there's a whole other cognitive bias of being a have not,
of being left on the cold, which I guess is
a fear of missing out. But there's also the benefit
(30:09):
of being a have where if you're talking about like
a fingerling, which is a fifteen dollars toy, but people
were crazy for those things that either last year or
the year before, like just about anybody can afford this
fifteen dollars toy. So even if you're like a have
not throughout the year, you're down on your luck, maybe
you're unemployed or you're underemployed, things just aren't going your way.
(30:33):
You could still camp out and wait for that late
night restocking the fingerlings and get your kid that toy,
and for that time you are a have, and maybe
even somebody with a much higher social status than you
couldn't get that fingerling, which makes it all the more sweet.
And then let's also not forget. Like we said, this
(30:53):
is during the holiday season, so emotions like count extra
So to be a have when you're normally not during
the holiday season because you gotta must have toy is
exponentially increased.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, it's a big deal because it's it. Even if
it's just emotionally equal for a brief period of time,
it can be a big deal for somebody. I say,
we take our final break here and then we come
back and talk about the worst people toy flippers right
(31:26):
after this. All right, so I set up the worst
(31:54):
people are toy flippers. Obviously there's a lot of really
really bad people in the world. And I'm being somewhat highperbolic,
but I do think somewhat the idea of buying, targeting
and buying a lot of must have toys to sell
later for profit on eBay makes you a pretty rotten person. Yeah,
(32:15):
go ahead and lay that judgment down.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Some people do. I reserve judgment for the ones who
do it professionally. I think if you are a person
who is just trying to augment your your own like
holiday expenses, and you are foreseeing a lack of supply
(32:37):
ahead of time, I say more power to you.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, I'm not into it. I feel the same way
about ticket scalpers.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Yeah, it's exactly. I mean it's the same thing basically.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, it's it's buying up a bunch of things sometimes
and this is completely gross and awful. Using bots, Yeah,
that's the pits too, especially for con tickets, like when
bots buy up all the best concert.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Tickets, especially our tickets.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah exactly, I.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Think anybody uses bots on ours?
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Well, probably not. But actually, stuff you should know is
we've seen very few bad examples of people trying to
overcharge for a sold out show. More times than not,
it's a fellow listener that's like, hey, just come along,
you can sit next to me for face value, or
I'll even give it to you.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, that happens quite a bit. And yeah, I mean
there's only been a couple where somebody's like, you know,
a million dollars and of course they didn't sell it. No,
but yeah, we haven't run into that. Mostly the problem
is from ticket outlets just charging ridiculous fees on top
of our ticket price.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Well that makes us mad, and you all should know
we don't have control over that. No, we're the Eddie
Vedder of podcasting.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
But if you ever find yourself in a situation where
you got shut out of a stuff, you should know
show and your option is to not go or to
pay like a ridiculous amount, just send us an email
put you on the list.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Oh god, Chuck, Wow, you just opened some floodgates.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I mean, there's very few list spots, so it's not
like you.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Know, right now, you just started a must have toy
frenzy for the list. Look of what you've done.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Oh, let's get back to bots. These bots are so
savvy that they can they can buy out, they can
have hundreds of credit card numbers on file because sometimes
they'll have like a limit to how many things you
can buy. They are all these shortcuts and ways to
bypass all of these safeguards put into effect, including captures.
(34:37):
They will hire foreign workers to sit around and type
in the captures to get through security.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Which I mean, if there is anything that says holiday
spirit more than that, I can't think of it.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
But these bots can can sometimes buy out something in
the second that it goes up online for a regular
human being to say, oh, all right, they've released the
tickets or the doll.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Gone, because they'll so what they'll do is they'll go
on to like retail websites and figure out what the
unique idea is for the product that they're looking for.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
That's the real art.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
It'll start right, it'll start monitoring that page because people
who build these pages will put them out and just
won't you know, kind of rely open the curtain for
hours ahead of time. So the bot will have the
page targeted and just keep refreshing it hundreds of times
a second until that sale goes live, and they will
have ordered scores of these things, or dozens or hundreds
(35:36):
whatever however many it can before you can even if
you're sitting there refreshing your browser, between the time it
takes to refresh your page, they will have wiped the
place out using these bots, and then if you're truly sophisticated,
you probably have another set of bots who take your
inventory and then put it up for sale at some
exorbitant price on Amazon or eBay or Craigslist or something
(36:00):
like that.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, the worst people.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
So like, you don't even have to do anything, you
just stick your bots on it.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah. I stand by it, even for the enterprising person
who I just I don't know. I don't have a
big problem with someone making money off of someone else's
misfortune to not have been able to get that themselves.
I don't think it makes someone scrappy or enterprising at all.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Hey man, that's that's fine.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, I'll die on this hill.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Okay, that's fine. So if you are one of those
people that Chuck hates and you want to be enterprising,
there is an article written by Lisa Smith. It's Uninvestipedia
and it's called the Guide to reselling toys at Christmas
for extra money Oh God, which is very innocuous. Then
there's some tips actually that make a lot of sense.
If you want to do this, Do you want to
(36:48):
go over them? Are you going to remain mute? You
can go over them so you could talk to parents
if you wanted to write, Chuck, Yeah, that's right, Josh.
Good idea there, Because they know what kids want. You
could talk to kids them, which makes sense. I mean,
just go right to the horse's mouth. I've always said
the same thing, Josh. You can talk to Santa. I
thought this was pretty enterprising. Like imagine if you are
(37:11):
trying so what you're trying to do here is to
identify what toy you want to buy as early ahead
of time as possible, so that you can have identified
the hot season, the hot toy of the season, and
bought them before the demand really struck. So you talk
to mal Santa's, hang out in stores. You can talk
to cashiers, stock people, all that stuff, because not only
(37:34):
will they know what toy you need to look out for,
they'll know when these new supplies are coming in. Maybe
slip them a Starbucks card or something like that with
ten bucks on it as a thank you, but be
sure to deduct that from your bottom line.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Sure bribery. De duck that bribery, right.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
And then you can actually hang out in chat rooms.
There's entire websites that are dedicated to this kind of
stuff that are you know that say like here's the
toys we're looking for. I spotted some at this you know,
Walmart or whatever. This this stock guy said that Walmart
replenishes home on Thursdays at ten. There's a lot of
(38:10):
stuff you can do if you really wanted to put
the leg work in.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Great or you could put all that energy into doing
something worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Right, I know what you're talking about. This is the
like the Michael Larson approach to the holidays, the man
who got no whammies on pressure luck.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Oh, I had no problem with him.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Okay, this is virtually the same thing. It's not it's somebody.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Gave Michael Larson, wasn't There wasn't some father who didn't
have much money that you know, overpaid for a doll
to make his little girl happy at Christmas time. Michael
Larson didn't do that.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Right, he would have, though, I'm sure of it.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Oh goodness.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
So that's what you can do if you want to
flip toys and ruin the holidays. As far as Chuck's concern,
that's right, and that is that is a big part
of the competition of people who will go buy out stocks.
Like you're not really facing them nationwide unless you're talking
about people who release spots onto websites or whatever. But
they are out there and they do. They do actually
create competition and help drive that frenzy even further, because remember,
(39:22):
what's behind must have toys of scarcity marketing, and if
there are people out there actively contributing to the scarcity,
that's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Here's what I want to hear from. I want to
hear from some women listeners who let's say you go
on a on a on a date from a dating
app and you sit down across from your date and
you're like, what do you do? And he goes, I'm
a toy flipper, and she's like, what's that? He goes.
You know, around Christmas time, I go out and I
buy like tons of toys that I know little kids
(39:52):
really really want, and then I mark them up so
I can make a lot of money off their parents
who may not be able to afford it. You're right,
and just tell me how that day goes from there.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yeah? Can it? Does it have to be a man
and a woman? Can it just be anybody?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
It can be anybody. But you know, I think the
guy that does this is the guy that I just
did that voice.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
For, who's apparently from Jersey.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Sure, they're all from New Jersey. Okay, and I love
New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
So I feel like we've learned a lot here. Yeah,
we've talked about, you know, how a toy becomes a
must have toy of a season usually has to do
with some sort of some combination of advertising and buzz
marketing as long or as well as scarcity. The flippers
get involved, I think, and I want to back this up, Chuck,
(40:39):
there's not a lot of stuff out there on this.
This all had to be brought together. This is kind
of one of those rare stuff you should know theses. Yeah,
about what makes a must have toy must have toy,
But I think it's I think it holds up.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Should we talk about some of the big toys of
this year?
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yes, So those lists that are out there, this hell me.
Actually we put a bunch of well that's the point.
That's we're trying to help you and all of the
toy flippers out there. So actually this is for all
the parents. This will help you get a drop on
the toy flippers because I guarantee there are very few
toy flippers listening to stuff you should.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Know now, Because we have good people in our audience.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
So all those lists that are out there now, we
kind of compiled and cross referenced them. A number of
them lists from Target, Toys, Tots, Pets, and more. That's
just one Amazon, the Today Show, Toy Insider, the Spruce
Crazy Coupon Lady who had a post about toy flipping, Walmart,
(41:39):
and New York Magazine. All of those lists we looked
at and we found ones that appeared on at least
a couple if not more, And one of them, the
first one, appeared on basically every single list that we saw.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yeah, this one, the bloom doll. B lu me nothing
to do with the rested development, but it is this
is something that that my daughter might like. Apparently this
is another thing you add water to and it blooms.
But this is I don't think it hatches from an egg.
I think this doll just like grows like a chia
(42:11):
pet mite.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Kind of, and like the hair that grows is I
can't tell. It looks like some sort of foam or
styrofoam or something, but it takes different shapes like pineapples
or cakes or something like that. And there's I think
twenty two different versions.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, okay, and thousand of them, I'll walk it up.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
Yeah. But they're also yeah, they're super affordable too, so
they're probably going to be the hot must have Christmas
toy of the year.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
As bloom Dolls hatchamulves are still around.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yeah, and there's one that's from How to Train Your
Dragon Toothless Dragon. Yeah, the Baby Dragon. They have a
hatchamble version of him.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
What else Shirley Barbie's on the list.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, Barbie has a dream plane whoa which I saw
in a couple of lists where yeah, it's a plane
for Barbie. There's like a snack cart and everything. Okay,
comes with the dog that I guess lives on the plane.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Great.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
There's also Lol Surprise. Have you heard of that? No?
I hadn't heard of it either until we started researching this.
But they're like a whole brand, and a lot of these,
including bloom Dolls and Lol Surprise, they tap into like
this whole trend of unboxing. Do you remember when we
talked about unboxing on YouTube where like people open toys.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, because our good friend Joe Randazzo did his Lego
Man unboxing videos that were right still to me. One
of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yes, great plug by the way, but they they still
do that, like they're still unboxing. It's a huge trend
and that's worked its way into toys so lol. Surprise
is kind of based on that, and there's like a
whole line of dolls but they're like into like DJ
stuff and fashion and all that, but they also have Surprise.
And there's also a kid named Ryan's World. I don't
(43:59):
think that's his last name, but that's his YouTube channel
and guarantee we talked about Ryan's World in that Unboxing
Toys episode. But he's got all sorts of toys that
are out where you like, you just don't know what
you're getting when you open the thing. It's just surprise unboxing.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Weird sub genre on YouTube of unboxing or I remember
we talked about the one where the lady's hands would
just play with things.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah, it was the Yeah remember she was like Peppa Pie.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, it's so interesting. I'll sell you the one on
the list though that I like that. I usually look
at the toys that I'm like, would I like to
play this with my daughter? That's important. I can't be
bored out of my mind you know.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Oh yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
And this lego make your own movie kit looks pretty
cool to me.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah. I was kind of heartened to see that on
on a couple of lists, you know, because it's like, this.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Is pop motion movies you can make.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Well, yeah, it's thoughtful, it's inventive. I love it. Yeah,
where it's it's yeah, there's They have a bunch of
different stages and backgrounds and props, including a banana. It's great.
So you learn how to make Are you gonna get
get her?
Speaker 1 (45:10):
That?
Speaker 3 (45:10):
I think you should like a movie anytime, buddy. All right,
can we make a flaming hoop out of a coat
hanger and do things with that too?
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Okay? And then the other one was the Fisher Price
Linco moles, which are super cute, including the smooth move sloth.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Hey, I'm down with Fisher Price.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Yeah, that's so huge, huge right now? Yeah, do you
remember Playmobile?
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Playmobile?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Remember that they were like the vaguely European kind of
action people, but there was nothing like violent or military
about them. They would explore or.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
I probably recognize them. I definitely know that name.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
You've seen it a million times right when you see
it y'all. I'll look it up and show it to
you later, but it's you'll see it and be like, yeah,
of course, wait right there, sure, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah. I was kind of a Fisher Price kid. But
you know we still have some of that stuff that
our daughter plays with that we had when we were kids,
like the barn and the boat, and you know, it holds.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Up, definitely does hold up. You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Got nothing else?
Speaker 3 (46:18):
You're gonna go buy a bunch of toys and flip them.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
I got nothing else except for twenty thousand Hatchimles in
my garage.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Man. Here's the other thing, though, Chuck Like, you're taking
a risk because you got to predict what the must
have toys, and if you guess wrong, you got twenty
thousand hatchimles that nobody wants.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Boy, I'd love to see that happen in real life.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
I guarantee it happened. So just keep an her out,
all right. If you want to know more about the
must have toys, there's basically nothing you can't know that
we haven't already told you. So just I guess go
get your kids some Christmas toys.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
That's right?
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Is that a good way to sign off.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
That's great.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
Okay, Since I said, is this a good way to
sign off? Time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
I'm going to call this from a teacher. We always
like to shout out our teachers and their students. Hey, guys,
just sending one of what I'm sure is among infinite
thank yous that you receive as a teacher who regularly
references knowledge I gain from listening to your show in
my class. My students, unwittingly and I are eternally grateful
(47:24):
for your work. They give a hearty laugh whenever I
steal your characters. Tuktook the wise proto Homo sapien and
erg the folly prone genetic defect to elucid eight points
about the evolution of early humans. I knew you wouldn't
mind my poaching. That's so if you think, John.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
You'll be hearing from our lawyers.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
John, you're the toy flipper of teachers. Just kidding. The
reason I'm writing is to say I think you should
not be discouraged by any listener mail you receive telling
you to keep your opinions to yourself. My favorite episodes
are the ones where either or both of you have
such strong feelings about the subject that you can't help
but go on a rant. Maybe it's just because I
agree with every rant, but I feel like it is
(48:07):
important to take a stand on issues that matter to
you and admit that you're human beings with a real
stake in the game. Thanks again, I'll keep listening as
long as you keep podcasting. That is from John Lubushkin.
So thank you, mister Lubushkin, and hello to your students
mister Lubushkin's class. Yeah, hi, guys, you've got a cool teacher.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Yeah, he does some pretty cool He's doing God's work,
teaching the next generation.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
I hope he doesn't work in a public school because
you're going to be like, you can't say God's work.
If you want to get in touch with this like
mister Lubushkin did, or if you're a toy flipper who
has an argument against Chuck's argument, we want to hear
from you, bring it. You can go on to stuff
youshould Know dot com and check out our social links,
and you can also send us an email to Stuff
(48:56):
podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How
Stuff works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.