November 21, 2019 • 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).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Seattle and surrounding Greater Seattle area. We love you.
That's why we come to see you every January, and
we're doing that again this year coming up yep, Thursday,
January six, We're going to be at the More Theater
and you can get tickets and info by going to
s y s K live dot com and follow all
the links there. You can also go in person to
(00:20):
the box office of the Paramount Theater, who is apparently
selling tickets to our show at the More Theater to
get around a lot of those online fees. That's right.
So we'd love to see you there. We have rubbed
our stank all over that theater and we want your
stank on that theater as well. Yep, we'll see you
guys in January. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
(00:48):
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles
if you choke, Brian over there there, Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff you Should Know. Early Christmas a dish. Yeah,
we're kicking it off early like the rest of the
retail world, do you, uh yeah? Man. This year you
could find Halloween Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff in stores at
(01:11):
the same time, like it was just the most normal
thing in the world. But, um, you don't follow me
on Twitter, and you should. I'm not on Twitter. Well
that's what I'm saying. You should get on Twitter to
follow me. 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. Yeah yeah,
(01:36):
you people like that, Yeah, pretty much just troll I got. Yeah,
well that was my plug for Twitter. Oh yeah, yeah,
here we go. So, uh, let's see back, Chuck. You
were twelve, okay, I was seven. Um, you didn't have
(01:56):
a cabbage patch kid, did you. Well, there's just right
there if you really want to know. I think you've
told it before, but let's have it. Well, we bought
my sister one of the very first little people is
what they were called before they were cabbage patch kids
and Helen Georgia when they were handmade by Xavier Roberts,
(02:19):
who I recently learned stole that idea from a woman
and uh it took it as his own and made
millions of dollars off of her idea. Yeah, I mean
I wanted to maybe we'll do a short stuff about that.
I wanted to do a full length episode. But we
I mean, we definitely talked about that because I think
we have talked about like must have toys of the past,
and and maybe last year's or the year before Christmas edition. Yeah,
(02:41):
and we had she got this doll. Its name was
Chuck Um, which was kind of funny because that's my name.
And uh, 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. Does she
still have it? Oh? That's great, Um. And we'll fish
with Cabbage Patch Kids and then I'll take issue with you.
(03:02):
So go ahead, Okay, I know what you're gonna take
issue with. Oh I don't know if you do know,
let me so, let me, let me. Let me start.
So back in Cabbage Patch Kids were like the must
have toy of the Christmas season, and from what I
can tell, they were the first must have Christmas toy. Ever.
(03:26):
Now that's not to say there weren't extraordinarily popular toys
at around Christmas time before Star Wars very famously offered
their Early Birds 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.
(03:48):
One of the great great marketing gems of all time.
So that was a thing all the way back in two.
Mr potato Head was a hot toy that year. Robert
the Robe was a hot toy in And when you
say hot toys, it's tough to to overstate that like
Robert the Robot had T shirts in the fifties. Didn't
(04:11):
even know people wore T shirts in the fifties. He
was in a movie. Um like that, there was there was,
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. But that in
just the same way that there were hit movies like
The Godfather or like ben Her before Jaws came along,
(04:35):
there wasn't such a thing as the 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
(04:56):
driving me crazy. Well, I don't think it was. I
don't think it was Cabbage Patch. It's that was the
must have toy, the first must have toy. That's what
I take kiss you with the first Well, I don't know.
I mean, I'm just speaking from my own life, Van,
and I definitely think Star Wars counts because if you
can sell an empty box to a kid for Christmas,
(05:19):
then that that's pretty strong position as it 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 gonna be a big thing. So Kenner didn't have
as many of these made in the run up to
the film release pre Christmas. Uh so they got caught
with their pants down and they realized that there was
a big demand, a huge demand. They sold like million,
(05:44):
no million boxes, I'm trying to yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
I don't know forty million Star Wars toys at that
inside of a year, so okay, yeah, I'm not surprised
to hear that. And did you know that you can
even buy these empty box kits on eBay? Now? Oh yeah,
I'm sure that's all enlisted for Bucks. I'm not at
(06:06):
all surprised. Uh. 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. Boy,
that's sold seven million cartridges. Okay, great, Great, the numbers
don't lie. That's a big, big number, seven million, forty million.
(06:27):
You can toss big numbers out all day long. But
let me ask you this. For that empty box of
Star Wars for the Atari pac Man cartridge, did a
woman have her leg broken because the crowd trying to
get their hands on those things turned violent? Or before
you answer, in addition to that, did a department store
manager in Charleston, West Virginia have to arm himself with
(06:49):
the 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 no, Well, I think human behaviors have changed over
the years. I don't know. Three well, I guarantee I
could find one violent incident about the Atari cartridge. I'll
(07:11):
bet you couldn't. Well, you know there wasn't then, because
there was they met the demand. Okay, so that's a
big part of it too, right, So there have been
well let's just move on from this the cabbage Patch
cabbage Patch kids if not worthy first, which they were?
Did you have Yeah? Yeah, Webberdno, you had a cabbage
Patch kid. Yeah. I ended up taking his head off
(07:32):
and giving him a mohawk as I grew older. But
because not to be too like gender binary here, but
I didn't know a lot of boys that wanted the
cabbage Patch kid. What I've I've always broken the mold chuck. Well, sure, no,
I mean there's nothing wrong with it. I grew up
with William wants a doll on free to bu and me,
(07:54):
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. Yeah, as far as I knew, everybody
wanted a cabbage Patch kid. We'll just put this one
to bed, like a cabbage Patch kid with a mohawk. Yeah. So,
um right, well that was a big thing. Like there
(08:16):
was there was some hallmarks to the idea of a
must have toy that were surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids. Violence
is one, Um, there was a lot of buzz that
was picked up by the media, and one of the
ways that that was generated was by UM, I think Coliko,
who owned cabbage Patch Kids at the time, sent these
dolls directly to reporters. That was a big one. UM
(08:40):
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 has been carried on as a tradition ever since then,
ever since that very very first time with Cabbage Patch Kids. Uh.
There were Nintendos that dominated back in eight uh and
(09:03):
three years in a row, Nintendo had three different products
that were like the must have Christmas toy, UM, that
first game console huge, the Game Boy Huger it felt
like uh, and then of course 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,
(09:25):
man in sixty four was pretty great with Golden Eye.
Oh God in sixty four was great. Yeah with gold
and I I mean like it would have been, you know,
fine on its own, but the fact that Golden Eye
existed was the thing that made in sixty four to
me that game blew my mind. Um. Yeah it was great,
especially the Battle Royal where you could play your friends.
Oh man, that was finn. Yeah, we called it Hunt
(09:46):
and Chase. Yeah. I used to get so mad 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 stock behind me and shot me
in the head. Right, Yeah, that was always a bummer.
What about Tickle Myoma? That was a big one, thanks
(10:07):
to Rosie O'Donnell. That was a little old for that.
Oh really, that was in my mid twenties. I had one.
Oh yeah, well you were high school, not really, yeah,
this was this is post high school even. But this
was such a craze that there was that um characteristic
violence where a Walmart employee was trampled while he was
(10:28):
trying to restock the display um late at night, I believe.
But he had a pulled hamstring, injuries to his back,
his jaws, knee broken, rib, a concussion, um. And it
continues on like I haven't read about any violence from
hatch a Moles, but from two thousand and sixteen to
two eighteen. They were the if not one of the
(10:48):
top um must have Toys of the year, and so
hatcher molesw come because you have to put it 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. Oh. So my experience is that it's
(11:10):
they're they're pretty, They're good. Oh yeah, yeah, so you
you like your hatch the mole? Yeah? Are you talking?
Is it like animatronic? Huh? Is it animatronic? I'm talking
about hatch the moles. Yeah, it's it's so okay. So
I don't know anything about the dish. I just my
experiences from my niece, and I don't remember any dish.
Oh wait, this isn't the Are we talking about two
(11:32):
different things. This is the thing you put in water. No, no, no,
electrocute yourself when you touch it. Okay, maybe I'm thinking
about some melts. 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 everything. It's a bit like the tamagochi but
like an animatronic pet. Oh, I got you now, I'm
(11:52):
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. Yeah, no, that's that's not
the hatch moles are much different. So so there's this
tradition of them must have Christmas toy um 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,
(12:14):
and there's like social media stuff. Now, but there's like
a really big question that doesn't have 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? Well,
let's take a break and look get to the bottom
(12:34):
of it. Right after this, that was quite a set up,
(13:00):
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 do you knew exactly what
to do, you knew exactly how to do it. There
was no no frills, no nothing. It was all just
holiday joy and the goodness of the Christmas holiday season.
That's right, That is correct. And you learned what you
(13:23):
wanted if you were a kid from two things. Saturday
Morning cartoon commercials and uh, whatever your catalog was. The
Seer's wish Book is certainly one service. Merchandise catalog was
another big one for us. Yeah, there's a Montgomery Awards catalog. Yeah,
of course. And um you put this together and you
(13:45):
introduced me to a website called wish book Web that
might as well be called um time suck dot com.
Yeah it's pretty great, isn't that because someone has gone
through and scan end Uh is it just year's wish books? No, No,
it's Sears J. C. Penny and Montgomery Ward. And then
(14:07):
I think there's the occasional what store is that here there? Right?
They have scanned these entire wish books up to nine, which,
from everyone knows, is the cutoff date for nostalgia. 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
(14:28):
spend a few minutes clicking through these things, in the
years where you were like six to twelve waves of nostalgia,
nostalgia wash over you, like like John Hodgeman would succumb
to these waves. Yeah, I know, it's amazing. I remember
some specific pictures. I remembered the I mean the NFL
(14:50):
section alone brought tears to my eyes and I forgot
how much they hyped football back then. You just can't
stop crying. It was crazy that the clothes, the alarm clocks,
the clock radios, the the tech section. Um, it was
just it was off the charts for me looking through this.
I almost did nothing else today. Yeah, I know it is.
(15:10):
Wish book Web is pretty awesome. Like somebody went through
and scanned every single page of these several hundred pages
each catalog's for decades worth of catalogs. It is. It
is God's work. And just to get laughs by like
seeing the the two four year olds posing in bathrobes,
like it's really really funny, right, well, it's got like
(15:34):
a pipe that blows up. God. This is just amazing.
What a great website. So so wish book Web is
kind of preserved how you used to figure out what
you wanted for Christmas, which was you go through these
wish books or these catalogs or whatever, and then you
tell your parents you dog ear them, maybe drop some hints.
It was the correct way. Century has a kind of
(15:56):
an updated version of that, but it's still kind of
follows this same 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.
(16:19):
I think they're kind of like a Midwestern Target. Yeah,
and they have a toy catalog that they put out still,
I believe to this year. Well now if you get
the Restoration Hardware right or Ikea, but the But there's
lists everywhere, and it seems like every retailer has one
or all the major retailers have one, and depending on
(16:40):
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, Like, I'm on
one end of the spectrum. You have um like third
party websites and publications and organizations like the Spruce or
(17:01):
Toy Insider or Toys Tots, Pets and more, and they
actually evaluate the toys when they make their lists. 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 a catalog and pick out stuff
(17:21):
than 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 say what do you want? Like, I don't. I
don't know how it works these days. I don't know.
Maybe instead of like dog earing the pages, you send
your parents links. I'm sure you do, actually you know, yeah,
But I mean if your kids are too young to
(17:43):
be on the internet, I'm not sure how to do it.
Because I could hand my four year old catalog and
say pick out some stuff would be great, But I'm
not gonna say, hey, just log onto the spruce and
go uh scroll down and see you find something you like?
Stay out of their parents section. What do I mean?
What do you do? You have? You literally have a kid, chuck,
(18:05):
what do you do? I don't know, I mean we buy,
we just buy things that we think she might like. Um,
so there's like a whole world out there of like
lists and websites that showed toys and stuff that she's
unaware of. Oh wow, she's got a big surprise ahead
of her. So that's great. I'm excited for her. Actually yeah,
(18:26):
but I mean you definitely feel like you're sort of
stabbing in the dark. Let's do like I mean, a
parent can go through and look at those lists, but
you know, kill me. 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
(18:50):
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 to the guesswork 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. Yeah. I think my
problem is I don't know what has bought and what
(19:11):
is real reviews because as you have dug up and
I didn't even know this, of course they do this. Um,
if you go on Amazon, they you know, you can
spend two million bucks as a retailer to be on there,
you know, on their top list or whatever. So okay, yes,
And what I saw though, was that they you spend
(19:33):
that money to nominate them to nominate your toy for
their consideration to include on the West for a nomination.
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 curated. They actually kind of keep a close lid
(19:56):
on it. But it generated like a hundred and twenty
million dollars in revenue for Amazon just to be on
their list of hot toys for the year. Walmart they
charged ten grand a month per toy to be on
their Buyer's Picks toy list. And uh, like you point
out here, they Walmart starts their list in August, and
(20:18):
you've got to wonder, is that because they're making tin
grand of pop right off of all of the stuff
per month. Yeah. Yeah, they released There's in late August,
before Labor Day even and like this isn't like, 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 There's at the beginning of September. Um. I think
(20:40):
Bull's Eye is the name of their mascot dog mascot
spuzz Mackenzie basically, 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 him, and the fact that there's not
one for Target makes me think either they're really keeping
(21:02):
a lid on it or um, they actually don't charge
for that. But so there's there's kind of two lists
where if you're a parent you need to ask, Yeah,
you need to ask dogs and dog people and cat 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
(21:24):
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 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. Yeah, I mean, I guess anytime you
(21:46):
look up something on a major retailer website, those first
few things are sponsored and they say sponsored in little letters. Oh,
sometimes they don't really, Yeah, I mean sometimes it's kind
of hard to discern, uh, whether or not you're looking
at the real top thing or the sponsored thing, right,
And I think, like with the Giftless in particular, I
(22:07):
don't believe that they say that these are sponsored. I
think it's just like here's the hot lists according to Amazon. Well,
let's talk a bit about marketing in general around the holidays.
Um that you know, it's a it's a science in
a way, and they have found out through science that um,
happy people buy more. Uh you are not everyone's happy
(22:28):
around the holidays, but they definitely as marketers, play on
the idea that you are happier around the holidays, and
so you should be in the buying spirit. Uh, definitely
when you're talking about kids, that is the case. They
pummel children with ads. There was one study here the
University of Hertfordshire counted one hundred ads and a three
(22:50):
hour Saturday morning kids uh slot Christmas hundred in a
three hour slot. That's a lot of ads, it is um.
And then 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, um,
or just on kids websites. There's ads everywhere. I can't
(23:13):
remember what episode we really kind of dove into that
advertising man, I think it was about advertising for children,
like that was the sole goal. So so the idea
is that just 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, will be
(23:35):
able to kind of tap into that good will and
good mood and um, make you nostalgic or or feel
good about things and so um by doing that, we'll
be able to kind of tie our our brand or
our product to that holiday. Um, that holiday sensation and
you'll say, oh, I do want to go by that
because it makes me think of being a kid at
(23:57):
Christmas time. That's really a six stuff. Um, I mean
like that's everywhere. You can't get away from that in
the holiday season. And there's not even necessarily anything wrong
with it. It's just that's just basic marketing and advertising
one on one when it comes to holiday advertising. Yeah,
and the other thing we mentioned earlier in terms of marketing,
(24:18):
and this is also marketing one on one, is about scarcity. Right.
If you have a toy that there's a limited amount of,
that is when you're gonna 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
(24:38):
sale at a certain time, it is frightening what a parent,
some parents might do to secure that toy. Yes, so
this is finally we've reached the key ingredient. Right, You've
got lists of toys that are promoted and advertising 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 to buy because it's the Aliday season. We're
(25:00):
in a good mood. But when you add that scarcity marketing,
it ramps it up to a totally different level. 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
(25:21):
willing to camp out at four am waiting for you know,
a twenty four hour retailer to restock UM their their
supply of 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, of fear
(25:43):
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 hyper charges must have toy frenzy. Yeah,
and it's not you know, just toys. You've seen everything
from UM. You make a great point about Peppi Van
Winkle whiskey. Oh, I should say that's from marketing Land.
(26:06):
A guy named Jacob bods Gud wrote an article on
marketing Land where he cited that and the Disney Vault
is really good examples. Yeah, Disney Vault, it's another great one. Um.
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 on one big package. They would release
them every every now and then, and you know, you
(26:28):
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 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. Yeah,
that was a big one. And um Bod's Guard makes
the point like by making them limited and available also
(26:53):
only for a limited time, with years sometimes a decade
in between times when you can buy these things, it
creates this like frenzy to go buy them, and it
also makes them like a treasured part of that person's home,
you know what I mean. Yeah, And you can also
fake out the public a little bit and mislead them
on the scarcity like you might have a lot of
(27:15):
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. Yeah. The
people who made Hatch a Moles spin Master, Um, Hatch
the Moles were really hard to find and I think
two thousands, sixteen, seventeen and eighteen UM, and spin Master
was basically accused of purposefully using scarcity marketing. And for
(27:36):
their part, they said, hey, we were totally caught off
guard three years in a row by the um you
know the popularity of Hatch the Moles, and other people
were like, that's that's b s. You can totally ramp
up production pretty fast. Um. Another must have toy was
finger links. Remember them from like last year or the
year before. They were like little monkeys or slaw or
(28:00):
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 stuff.
They weren't they were cute instead of uncanny because they
weren't the words finger sized robots together so right, they
would cut your throat while you slept. Um, But they
(28:20):
they were 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 supplies here faster, and they were able to
ramp up and and meet demand pretty quickly. So the
(28:42):
idea that Hatch themill just couldn't possibly do that really
smelled to a lot of people like they were purposefully
using scarcity marketing. 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, Home and Finch
had the Holm and Burger that like one day a week,
like we'll sell a hundred of them starting at ten
(29:04):
pm on this night, and then everyone's like, oh my god,
what is in that burger? People would line up the block. Yeah.
Or this is a nice little tidbit here that you
dug up about supermarket experiments. Yeah, that's from an article
from market Watch by Mark Elwood on that one. It's amazing.
Even putting up a sign for soup that says limit
(29:28):
twelve per person will make people be like, oh, I
should I should probably buy twelve of these for whatever reason.
Campbells might they might stop making their chicken noodle soup
right or in this case, it was soup that was
on sale, so who knows what the price is going
to go back to? You know, well, that's true. So um.
One of the other things that scarcity produces is this
(29:49):
idea that there 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, um cognitive bias of 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 finger link, which is a fifteen dollar toy, but
people were crazy for those things that either last year
or the year before, and like just about anybody can
afford this fifteen dollar toy. So even if you're like
I have not throughout the year, you're down on your luck,
maybe you're unemployed or you're unemployed, Um, things just aren't
(30:32):
going your way. You could still camp out and wait
for that late night restocking of finger links 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 finger link, which
makes it all the more sweet. And then let's also
not forget. Like we said, this is during the holiday season,
(30:55):
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. Yeah, it's a
big deal, um, because it's it. Even if it's just
emotionally equal for a brief period of time, it's it
(31:16):
can be a big deal for somebody. Um, I'd say
we take our final break here here, and then we
come back and talk about the worst people toy flippers
right after this. All right, so I set up the
(31:54):
worst people are toy flippers. Obviously there's a lot of really,
really bad people in the world. And I'm being what hyperbolic,
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):
I'm gonna go ahead and lay that judgment down 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 um, your own like
holiday expenses and uh you are foreseeing a lack of
(32:36):
supply ahead of time, I say more power to you. Yeah,
I'm not into it. I feel the same way about
ticket scalpers. Yeah, it's exactly. I mean it's the same
thing basically. Yeah, it's it's buying up a bunch of things. Uh.
Sometimes and this is completely gross and awful. Using bots. Yeah,
(32:57):
that's the pits to especially for concert tickets, like when
bots buy up all the best concert tickets, especially our tickets. Yeah, exactly,
I think anybody uses bots on ours? Well probably not,
but um, actually, stuff you should know is is we've
seen very few bad examples of people trying to overcharge
for a sold out show. More times than not, it's
(33:19):
a fellow listener that's like, hey, just come along, you
can sit next to me for face value, or I
don't even give it to you. 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 now. Um, but yeah,
we haven't run into that. Mostly the problem is from
um ticket outlets just charging ridiculous fees on top of
(33:43):
our ticket price. Well that makes us mad, and you
all should know we don't have control over that. Um.
We're the Eddie Vetter of podcasting, right. But if you
ever find yourself in a situation where you got shut
out of the stuff, you should know show and your
option is to not go or to pay like a
ridiculous amount, just send us an email. Will put you
on the list. Oh god, Chuck, Wow, you just opened
(34:03):
some floodgates. I mean, there's a very few list spots,
so it's not like you know right now you just
started a must have toy frenzy for the list. Look
what you've done. Oh let's get back to bots. Um.
These bots are so savvy that they can they can
buy out, they can have hundreds of credit card numbers
(34:26):
on file because sometimes they'll have like a limit to
how many things you can buy. They are all these
shortcuts in ways to bypass all of these safeguards put
into effect, including captures. They will hire foreign workers to
sit around and type in the captions to get through security.
Which I mean, if there is anything that says holiday
(34:47):
spirit more than that, I can't think of it. But
these bots can, uh can sometimes buy out something in
the second that it goes up online for regular human
to say, oh, like, all right, they've released the tickets
or the doll m right, because they they'll see. What
(35:07):
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. 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
really open the curtain for hours ahead of time, so
the body will have the page targeted and just keep
refreshing it hundreds of times a second until that sale
(35:31):
goes live, and they will have ordered scores of these
things or dozens or hundreds 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
(35:51):
of bots who take your inventory and then put it
up for sale at some exorbitant price on Amazon or
eBay or craig List or something like that. Yeah, the
worst people. So like, you don't even have to do anything,
you just stick your bots on it. Yeah. I stand
by it, even for the enterprising person who I just
I don't know. I don't have a have a big
(36:12):
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.
Hey man, that's that's fine. Yeah, I'll die on this hill. Okay,
that's fine. So if you are one of those people
that Chuck hates and you want to be enterprising, there
(36:33):
is a article written by Lisa Smith. It's on Investipedia
and it's called the Guide to reselling toys at Christmas
for extra money, which is very innocuous. Um. Then there's
some tips actually that make a lot of sense. If
you want to do this, do you want to go
over them or you're gonna remain mute? You can go
over so you could talk to parents if you wanted
(36:54):
to write Chuck, that's right, Josh good idea. Um there,
because they know what kids want. You can talk to
kids themselves, which makes sense. I mean, just go right
to the horse's mouth. I've already said the same thing, Joshua. Um,
you can talk to Santa. I thought this was pretty enterprising.
Like imagine if you are trying So what you're trying
to do here is to identify what toy you want
(37:16):
to buy as early ahead of time as possible, so that, um,
you can have identified the hot season, the hot toy
of the season, and bought them before the demand really struck.
So you talked to mall, Santa's hang out in stores,
you can talk to cashier's stock people, all that stuff,
because not only will they know what toy you need
(37:36):
to look out for, they'll know when these new supplies
are coming in. Maybe slip on 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. Deduct that bribery, right, and then um, you
can actually hang out in chat rooms. There's entire websites
that are dedicated to this kind of stuff that are
(37:56):
um you know that that say like, here's the toys
we're looking for or I spotted some at this you know,
Walmart or whatever. This this stock guy said that Walmart
replenish his own on Thursdays at ten. Um. There's a
lot of stuff you can do if you really wanted
to put the leg work in great or you could
(38:16):
put all that energy into doing something worthwhile. Right, I
know what you're talking about. This is the like the
Michael Larson approach to the holidays, the man who got
no whammy's on pressure. Luck. Oh, I had no problem
with him. Okay, this is virtually the same thing. It's
(38:36):
somebody Michael Larson wasn't. Uh, 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, right, Uh, he would have, though,
I'm sure of it. Oh goodness. So that's what you
(38:59):
can do if you want to flip toys and ruin
the holidays. As far as Chuck's concerns, um 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 bots onto websites or whatever. But they are out
there and they do. They do actually create competition and
(39:19):
help drive that frenzy even further, because remember what's behind
must have toys a scarcity marketing, and if there are
people out there actively contributing to the scarcity, that's a
big deal. Here's what I want to hear from. I
want to hear from, uh some women listeners who let's
say you go on a on a on a date
(39:39):
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 like, what's that?
Because you know, around Christmas time, I go out and
buy like tons of toys that I know little kids
really really want, and then I'll mark them up so
I can make a lot of money off their parents
who may not be able to afford it. Right, and
just tell me how that date goes from there? Yeah?
(40:02):
Can it? Does it have to be a man and
a woman? Can it just be anybody? It can be anybody?
But you know, I think the guy that does this
is the guy that I just did that voice for,
who's apparently from Jersey. They're all from New Jersey. Okay, So, um,
I feel like we've learned a lot here. We've talked about,
(40:23):
you know, how a toy becomes a must have toy
of a season usually has to do with some sort
of some combination of of advertising and buzz marketing as
long or as well as um scarcity the flippers get involved. Um,
I think, and I want to back this up, Chuck,
there's not a lot of stuff out there on this.
(40:43):
This all had to be brought together. This is kind
of one of those rare stuff you should know THESS
about what makes must have toy must have toy. But
I think it's I think it holds up. Should we
talk about some of the big toys of this year? Yes,
So those lists that are out there, this helps me.
Actually we put a bunch of well that's the point.
That's we're trying to help you and all of the
(41:04):
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 know now because
we have good people in our audience, so that all
those lists that are out there now we kind of
compiled and cross referenced them. A number of them lists
(41:25):
from Target, Toys, toughts, pets, and more. That's just one Amazon,
the Today's Show, Toy Insider, the Spruce Crazy Coupon Lady
who had a post about toy flipping, Walmart, and New
York Magazine. All those lists we looked at and we
found ones that appeared on at least a couple, if
(41:46):
not more, And one of them, the first one, appeared
on basically every single list that we saw. Yeah, this one,
the balloom doll b l U m E. Nothing to
do with the rest of development, but it is this
is something and that that my daughter might like. Apparently
this is another another thing you add water to uh
and it blooms. But this is I don't think it
(42:08):
hatches from an egg. I think this doll just like
grows like a chia pet mite 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. Yeah, yeah,
(42:32):
but they're also yeah, they're super affordable too, so they're
they're probably going to be the hot must have Christmas
toy of the Year's bloom Dolls Hatch the Moles are
still around. Yeah, and there's one that's um from How
to Train Your Dragon Toothless Dragon, the Baby Dragon. They
have a Hatch the Mole version of him. What else
really Barbies on the list? Yeah, Barbie has a dream Plane,
(42:55):
which I saw in a couple of lists where um, yeah,
it's a for Barbie. There's like a snack cart and
everything comes with a dog that I guess lives on
the plane. There's also l O L Surprise? Have you
heard of that? I hadn't heard of it either until
we started researching this, But they're like a whole brand
um and a lot of these, including bloom Dolls in
(43:18):
l O L 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 because our
good friend, uh Joe Randazzo did his Lego Man unboxing
videos that were still to me one of the funniest
things I've ever seen. Yes, great plug by the way,
(43:40):
but they still do that, like they're still unboxing is
a huge trend and that's worked its way into toys,
so L O L 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 think that's his last name,
(44:01):
but that's his his YouTube channel and guarantee we talked
about Ryan's World in that Unboxing Toys episode. But um,
he's got all sorts of toys that are um out
where you like, you just don't know what you're getting
when you open the thing. It's just surprise unboxing the
weird sub genre on YouTube of unboxing or I remember
(44:21):
we talked about the one where the lady's hands would
just play with things. Yeah, it was the Yeah remember
she was like pepper Peg. Yeah, it's so interesting. Uh,
I'll tell you the one on the list though that
I like that. Um, I usually look at the toys
that I'm like, what, I like to play this with
my daughter, because that's important. I can't be bored out
of my mind, you know. Oh yeah, good point. Uh.
(44:43):
And this lego make your own movie kit looks pretty
cool to me. Yeah. I was kind of hartened to
see that on on a couple of lists, you know,
because it's like, this is about motion movies you can make. Yeah,
it's thoughtful, it's inventive. Yeah, where it's it's yeah, there's
They have a bunch of different stages and backgrounds and props,
(45:04):
including a banana. It's great. So you learn how to make.
Are you gonna get get her? That? I think you
should anytime? Buddy? Can we make a flaming hoop out
of a coat hanger and do things with that too? Okay? Um?
And then the other one was the Fisher Price link
A moles, which are super cute, including the smooth move sloth.
(45:28):
Hey I'm down with Fisher Price yea, so huge, huge
right now? Yeah? Do you remember Playmobile? Play Mobile? Remember
that they were like the vaguely European kind of um
action people, but there was nothing like violent or military
about them. They would explore or um. I probably recognize them.
(45:49):
I definitely know that name. You You've seen it a
million times. Right when you see it, you I'll 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,
I see him right there. Sure, yeah, there you go. 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 up,
(46:14):
definitely does hold up. You got anything else, nothing else?
You're gonna go buy a bunch of toys and flip them.
I got nothing else except for twenty tho hatch homles
in my garage. Man. Here's the other thing, though, Chuck, like,
you're taking a risk because you've got to predict what
they must have toys. And if you if you guess wrong,
you've got twenty thousand hatch moles that nobody wants. But
I'd love to see that happen in real life. I
(46:38):
guarantee it happened. So just keep an ear out, Uh,
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 your
kids some Christmas toys. That's right? Is that a good
way to sign off? That's great? Okay? Since I said, uh,
(46:59):
is this a good way to sign off. It's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this from a teacher.
We always like to shout out our teachers and their
their students. Hey, guys, just sending one of what I'm
sure is among infinite thank you so that you receive
as a teacher who regularly references knowledge I gained from
(47:19):
listening to your show in my class. My students, unwittingly, Uh,
and I are eternally grateful for your work. They give
a hearty laugh whenever I steal your characters. Took Took
the wise proto Homo sapien and erg the folly prone
genetic defect to elucidate points about the evolution of early humans.
(47:39):
I knew you wouldn't mind my poaching that you think, John,
you'll be hearing from our lawyers. John, you're the toy
flipper of teachers. Just kidding, Uh. The reason I'm writing
is to say I think you should not be discouraged
by any listener mail you received telling you to keep
your opinions to yourself. My favorite episodes are the ones
where either or both of you have so strong feelings
(48:00):
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 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 L. Bushkin. So thank you, Mr. Lebushkin,
(48:22):
and hello to uh your students. Mr Lebushkin's class. Yeah, hi, guys,
you's got a cool teacher. Yeah, he does sound pretty cool.
He's doing God's work, teaching the next generation. That's right.
I hope he doesn't work in a public school because
he's gonna be like, can't say God's work. If you
want to get in touch with us like Mr Lebushkin did,
(48:44):
or if you're a toy flipper who has an argument
against Chuck's argument, we want to hear from you. Bring
You can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
com and check out our social links, and you can
also send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
(49:06):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows h
Hello, Seattle and surrounding Greater Seattle area. We love you.
That's why we come to see you every January, and
we're doing that again this year coming up yep, Thursday,
January six, We're going to be at the More Theater
and you can get tickets and info by going to
s y s K live dot com and follow all
the links there. You can also go in person to
(00:20):
the box office of the Paramount Theater, who is apparently
selling tickets to our show at the More Theater to
get around a lot of those online fees. That's right.
So we'd love to see you there. We have rubbed
our stank all over that theater and we want your
stank on that theater as well. Yep, we'll see you
guys in January. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
(00:48):
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles
if you choke, Brian over there there, Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff you Should Know. Early Christmas a dish. Yeah,
we're kicking it off early like the rest of the
retail world, do you, uh yeah? Man. This year you
could find Halloween Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff in stores at
(01:11):
the same time, like it was just the most normal
thing in the world. But, um, you don't follow me
on Twitter, and you should. I'm not on Twitter. Well
that's what I'm saying. You should get on Twitter to
follow me. 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. Yeah yeah,
(01:36):
you people like that, Yeah, pretty much just troll I got. Yeah,
well that was my plug for Twitter. Oh yeah, yeah,
here we go. So, uh, let's see back, Chuck. You
were twelve, okay, I was seven. Um, you didn't have
(01:56):
a cabbage patch kid, did you. Well, there's just right
there if you really want to know. I think you've
told it before, but let's have it. Well, we bought
my sister one of the very first little people is
what they were called before they were cabbage patch kids
and Helen Georgia when they were handmade by Xavier Roberts,
(02:19):
who I recently learned stole that idea from a woman
and uh it took it as his own and made
millions of dollars off of her idea. Yeah, I mean
I wanted to maybe we'll do a short stuff about that.
I wanted to do a full length episode. But we
I mean, we definitely talked about that because I think
we have talked about like must have toys of the past,
and and maybe last year's or the year before Christmas edition. Yeah,
(02:41):
and we had she got this doll. Its name was
Chuck Um, which was kind of funny because that's my name.
And uh, 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. Does she
still have it? Oh? That's great, Um. And we'll fish
with Cabbage Patch Kids and then I'll take issue with you.
(03:02):
So go ahead, Okay, I know what you're gonna take
issue with. Oh I don't know if you do know,
let me so, let me, let me. Let me start.
So back in Cabbage Patch Kids were like the must
have toy of the Christmas season, and from what I
can tell, they were the first must have Christmas toy. Ever.
(03:26):
Now that's not to say there weren't extraordinarily popular toys
at around Christmas time before Star Wars very famously offered
their Early Birds 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.
(03:48):
One of the great great marketing gems of all time.
So that was a thing all the way back in two.
Mr potato Head was a hot toy that year. Robert
the Robe was a hot toy in And when you
say hot toys, it's tough to to overstate that like
Robert the Robot had T shirts in the fifties. Didn't
(04:11):
even know people wore T shirts in the fifties. He
was in a movie. Um like that, there was there was,
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. But that in
just the same way that there were hit movies like
The Godfather or like ben Her before Jaws came along,
(04:35):
there wasn't such a thing as the 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
(04:56):
driving me crazy. Well, I don't think it was. I
don't think it was Cabbage Patch. It's that was the
must have toy, the first must have toy. That's what
I take kiss you with the first Well, I don't know.
I mean, I'm just speaking from my own life, Van,
and I definitely think Star Wars counts because if you
can sell an empty box to a kid for Christmas,
(05:19):
then that that's pretty strong position as it 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 gonna be a big thing. So Kenner didn't have
as many of these made in the run up to
the film release pre Christmas. Uh so they got caught
with their pants down and they realized that there was
a big demand, a huge demand. They sold like million,
(05:44):
no million boxes, I'm trying to yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
I don't know forty million Star Wars toys at that
inside of a year, so okay, yeah, I'm not surprised
to hear that. And did you know that you can
even buy these empty box kits on eBay? Now? Oh yeah,
I'm sure that's all enlisted for Bucks. I'm not at
(06:06):
all surprised. Uh. 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. Boy,
that's sold seven million cartridges. Okay, great, Great, the numbers
don't lie. That's a big, big number, seven million, forty million.
(06:27):
You can toss big numbers out all day long. But
let me ask you this. For that empty box of
Star Wars for the Atari pac Man cartridge, did a
woman have her leg broken because the crowd trying to
get their hands on those things turned violent? Or before
you answer, in addition to that, did a department store
manager in Charleston, West Virginia have to arm himself with
(06:49):
the 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 no, Well, I think human behaviors have changed over
the years. I don't know. Three well, I guarantee I
could find one violent incident about the Atari cartridge. I'll
(07:11):
bet you couldn't. Well, you know there wasn't then, because
there was they met the demand. Okay, so that's a
big part of it too, right, So there have been
well let's just move on from this the cabbage Patch
cabbage Patch kids if not worthy first, which they were?
Did you have Yeah? Yeah, Webberdno, you had a cabbage
Patch kid. Yeah. I ended up taking his head off
(07:32):
and giving him a mohawk as I grew older. But
because not to be too like gender binary here, but
I didn't know a lot of boys that wanted the
cabbage Patch kid. What I've I've always broken the mold chuck. Well, sure, no,
I mean there's nothing wrong with it. I grew up
with William wants a doll on free to bu and me,
(07:54):
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. Yeah, as far as I knew, everybody
wanted a cabbage Patch kid. We'll just put this one
to bed, like a cabbage Patch kid with a mohawk. Yeah. So,
um right, well that was a big thing. Like there
(08:16):
was there was some hallmarks to the idea of a
must have toy that were surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids. Violence
is one, Um, there was a lot of buzz that
was picked up by the media, and one of the
ways that that was generated was by UM, I think Coliko,
who owned cabbage Patch Kids at the time, sent these
dolls directly to reporters. That was a big one. UM
(08:40):
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 has been carried on as a tradition ever since then,
ever since that very very first time with Cabbage Patch Kids. Uh.
There were Nintendos that dominated back in eight uh and
(09:03):
three years in a row, Nintendo had three different products
that were like the must have Christmas toy, UM, that
first game console huge, the Game Boy Huger it felt
like uh, and then of course 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,
(09:25):
man in sixty four was pretty great with Golden Eye.
Oh God in sixty four was great. Yeah with gold
and I I mean like it would have been, you know,
fine on its own, but the fact that Golden Eye
existed was the thing that made in sixty four to
me that game blew my mind. Um. Yeah it was great,
especially the Battle Royal where you could play your friends.
Oh man, that was finn. Yeah, we called it Hunt
(09:46):
and Chase. Yeah. I used to get so mad 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 stock behind me and shot me
in the head. Right, Yeah, that was always a bummer.
What about Tickle Myoma? That was a big one, thanks
(10:07):
to Rosie O'Donnell. That was a little old for that.
Oh really, that was in my mid twenties. I had one.
Oh yeah, well you were high school, not really, yeah,
this was this is post high school even. But this
was such a craze that there was that um characteristic
violence where a Walmart employee was trampled while he was
(10:28):
trying to restock the display um late at night, I believe.
But he had a pulled hamstring, injuries to his back,
his jaws, knee broken, rib, a concussion, um. And it
continues on like I haven't read about any violence from
hatch a Moles, but from two thousand and sixteen to
two eighteen. They were the if not one of the
(10:48):
top um must have Toys of the year, and so
hatcher molesw come because you have to put it 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. Oh. So my experience is that it's
(11:10):
they're they're pretty, They're good. Oh yeah, yeah, so you
you like your hatch the mole? Yeah? Are you talking?
Is it like animatronic? Huh? Is it animatronic? I'm talking
about hatch the moles. Yeah, it's it's so okay. So
I don't know anything about the dish. I just my
experiences from my niece, and I don't remember any dish.
Oh wait, this isn't the Are we talking about two
(11:32):
different things. This is the thing you put in water. No, no, no,
electrocute yourself when you touch it. Okay, maybe I'm thinking
about some melts. 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 everything. It's a bit like the tamagochi but
like an animatronic pet. Oh, I got you now, I'm
(11:52):
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. Yeah, no, that's that's not
the hatch moles are much different. So so there's this
tradition of them must have Christmas toy um 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,
(12:14):
and there's like social media stuff. Now, but there's like
a really big question that doesn't have 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? Well,
let's take a break and look get to the bottom
(12:34):
of it. Right after this, that was quite a set up,
(13:00):
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 do you knew exactly what
to do, you knew exactly how to do it. There
was no no frills, no nothing. It was all just
holiday joy and the goodness of the Christmas holiday season.
That's right, That is correct. And you learned what you
(13:23):
wanted if you were a kid from two things. Saturday
Morning cartoon commercials and uh, whatever your catalog was. The
Seer's wish Book is certainly one service. Merchandise catalog was
another big one for us. Yeah, there's a Montgomery Awards catalog. Yeah,
of course. And um you put this together and you
(13:45):
introduced me to a website called wish book Web that
might as well be called um time suck dot com.
Yeah it's pretty great, isn't that because someone has gone
through and scan end Uh is it just year's wish books? No, No,
it's Sears J. C. Penny and Montgomery Ward. And then
(14:07):
I think there's the occasional what store is that here there? Right?
They have scanned these entire wish books up to nine, which,
from everyone knows, is the cutoff date for nostalgia. 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
(14:28):
spend a few minutes clicking through these things, in the
years where you were like six to twelve waves of nostalgia,
nostalgia wash over you, like like John Hodgeman would succumb
to these waves. Yeah, I know, it's amazing. I remember
some specific pictures. I remembered the I mean the NFL
(14:50):
section alone brought tears to my eyes and I forgot
how much they hyped football back then. You just can't
stop crying. It was crazy that the clothes, the alarm clocks,
the clock radios, the the tech section. Um, it was
just it was off the charts for me looking through this.
I almost did nothing else today. Yeah, I know it is.
(15:10):
Wish book Web is pretty awesome. Like somebody went through
and scanned every single page of these several hundred pages
each catalog's for decades worth of catalogs. It is. It
is God's work. And just to get laughs by like
seeing the the two four year olds posing in bathrobes,
like it's really really funny, right, well, it's got like
(15:34):
a pipe that blows up. God. This is just amazing.
What a great website. So so wish book Web is
kind of preserved how you used to figure out what
you wanted for Christmas, which was you go through these
wish books or these catalogs or whatever, and then you
tell your parents you dog ear them, maybe drop some hints.
It was the correct way. Century has a kind of
(15:56):
an updated version of that, but it's still kind of
follows this same 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.
(16:19):
I think they're kind of like a Midwestern Target. Yeah,
and they have a toy catalog that they put out still,
I believe to this year. Well now if you get
the Restoration Hardware right or Ikea, but the But there's
lists everywhere, and it seems like every retailer has one
or all the major retailers have one, and depending on
(16:40):
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, Like, I'm on
one end of the spectrum. You have um like third
party websites and publications and organizations like the Spruce or
(17:01):
Toy Insider or Toys Tots, Pets and more, and they
actually evaluate the toys when they make their lists. 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 a catalog and pick out stuff
(17:21):
than 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 say what do you want? Like, I don't. I
don't know how it works these days. I don't know.
Maybe instead of like dog earing the pages, you send
your parents links. I'm sure you do, actually you know, yeah,
But I mean if your kids are too young to
(17:43):
be on the internet, I'm not sure how to do it.
Because I could hand my four year old catalog and
say pick out some stuff would be great, But I'm
not gonna say, hey, just log onto the spruce and
go uh scroll down and see you find something you like?
Stay out of their parents section. What do I mean?
What do you do? You have? You literally have a kid, chuck,
(18:05):
what do you do? I don't know, I mean we buy,
we just buy things that we think she might like. Um,
so there's like a whole world out there of like
lists and websites that showed toys and stuff that she's
unaware of. Oh wow, she's got a big surprise ahead
of her. So that's great. I'm excited for her. Actually yeah,
(18:26):
but I mean you definitely feel like you're sort of
stabbing in the dark. Let's do like I mean, a
parent can go through and look at those lists, but
you know, kill me. 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
(18:50):
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 to the guesswork 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. Yeah. I think my
problem is I don't know what has bought and what
(19:11):
is real reviews because as you have dug up and
I didn't even know this, of course they do this. Um,
if you go on Amazon, they you know, you can
spend two million bucks as a retailer to be on there,
you know, on their top list or whatever. So okay, yes,
And what I saw though, was that they you spend
(19:33):
that money to nominate them to nominate your toy for
their consideration to include on the West for a nomination.
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 curated. They actually kind of keep a close lid
(19:56):
on it. But it generated like a hundred and twenty
million dollars in revenue for Amazon just to be on
their list of hot toys for the year. Walmart they
charged ten grand a month per toy to be on
their Buyer's Picks toy list. And uh, like you point
out here, they Walmart starts their list in August, and
(20:18):
you've got to wonder, is that because they're making tin
grand of pop right off of all of the stuff
per month. Yeah. Yeah, they released There's in late August,
before Labor Day even and like this isn't like, 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 There's at the beginning of September. Um. I think
(20:40):
Bull's Eye is the name of their mascot dog mascot
spuzz Mackenzie basically, 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 him, and the fact that there's not
one for Target makes me think either they're really keeping
(21:02):
a lid on it or um, they actually don't charge
for that. But so there's there's kind of two lists
where if you're a parent you need to ask, Yeah,
you need to ask dogs and dog people and cat 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
(21:24):
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 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. Yeah, I mean, I guess anytime you
(21:46):
look up something on a major retailer website, those first
few things are sponsored and they say sponsored in little letters. Oh,
sometimes they don't really, Yeah, I mean sometimes it's kind
of hard to discern, uh, whether or not you're looking
at the real top thing or the sponsored thing, right,
And I think, like with the Giftless in particular, I
(22:07):
don't believe that they say that these are sponsored. I
think it's just like here's the hot lists according to Amazon. Well,
let's talk a bit about marketing in general around the holidays.
Um that you know, it's a it's a science in
a way, and they have found out through science that um,
happy people buy more. Uh you are not everyone's happy
(22:28):
around the holidays, but they definitely as marketers, play on
the idea that you are happier around the holidays, and
so you should be in the buying spirit. Uh, definitely
when you're talking about kids, that is the case. They
pummel children with ads. There was one study here the
University of Hertfordshire counted one hundred ads and a three
(22:50):
hour Saturday morning kids uh slot Christmas hundred in a
three hour slot. That's a lot of ads, it is um.
And then 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, um,
or just on kids websites. There's ads everywhere. I can't
(23:13):
remember what episode we really kind of dove into that
advertising man, I think it was about advertising for children,
like that was the sole goal. So so the idea
is that just 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, will be
(23:35):
able to kind of tap into that good will and
good mood and um, make you nostalgic or or feel
good about things and so um by doing that, we'll
be able to kind of tie our our brand or
our product to that holiday. Um, that holiday sensation and
you'll say, oh, I do want to go by that
because it makes me think of being a kid at
(23:57):
Christmas time. That's really a six stuff. Um, I mean
like that's everywhere. You can't get away from that in
the holiday season. And there's not even necessarily anything wrong
with it. It's just that's just basic marketing and advertising
one on one when it comes to holiday advertising. Yeah,
and the other thing we mentioned earlier in terms of marketing,
(24:18):
and this is also marketing one on one, is about scarcity. Right.
If you have a toy that there's a limited amount of,
that is when you're gonna 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
(24:38):
sale at a certain time, it is frightening what a parent,
some parents might do to secure that toy. Yes, so
this is finally we've reached the key ingredient. Right, You've
got lists of toys that are promoted and advertising 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 to buy because it's the Aliday season. We're
(25:00):
in a good mood. But when you add that scarcity marketing,
it ramps it up to a totally different level. 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
(25:21):
willing to camp out at four am waiting for you know,
a twenty four hour retailer to restock UM their their
supply of 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, of fear
(25:43):
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 hyper charges must have toy frenzy. Yeah,
and it's not you know, just toys. You've seen everything
from UM. You make a great point about Peppi Van
Winkle whiskey. Oh, I should say that's from marketing Land.
(26:06):
A guy named Jacob bods Gud wrote an article on
marketing Land where he cited that and the Disney Vault
is really good examples. Yeah, Disney Vault, it's another great one. Um.
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 on one big package. They would release
them every every now and then, and you know, you
(26:28):
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 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. Yeah,
that was a big one. And um Bod's Guard makes
the point like by making them limited and available also
(26:53):
only for a limited time, with years sometimes a decade
in between times when you can buy these things, it
creates this like frenzy to go buy them, and it
also makes them like a treasured part of that person's home,
you know what I mean. Yeah, And you can also
fake out the public a little bit and mislead them
on the scarcity like you might have a lot of
(27:15):
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. Yeah. The
people who made Hatch a Moles spin Master, Um, Hatch
the Moles were really hard to find and I think
two thousands, sixteen, seventeen and eighteen UM, and spin Master
was basically accused of purposefully using scarcity marketing. And for
(27:36):
their part, they said, hey, we were totally caught off
guard three years in a row by the um you
know the popularity of Hatch the Moles, and other people
were like, that's that's b s. You can totally ramp
up production pretty fast. Um. Another must have toy was
finger links. Remember them from like last year or the
year before. They were like little monkeys or slaw or
(28:00):
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 stuff.
They weren't they were cute instead of uncanny because they
weren't the words finger sized robots together so right, they
would cut your throat while you slept. Um, But they
(28:20):
they were 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 supplies here faster, and they were able to
ramp up and and meet demand pretty quickly. So the
(28:42):
idea that Hatch themill just couldn't possibly do that really
smelled to a lot of people like they were purposefully
using scarcity marketing. 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, Home and Finch
had the Holm and Burger that like one day a week,
like we'll sell a hundred of them starting at ten
(29:04):
pm on this night, and then everyone's like, oh my god,
what is in that burger? People would line up the block. Yeah.
Or this is a nice little tidbit here that you
dug up about supermarket experiments. Yeah, that's from an article
from market Watch by Mark Elwood on that one. It's amazing.
Even putting up a sign for soup that says limit
(29:28):
twelve per person will make people be like, oh, I
should I should probably buy twelve of these for whatever reason.
Campbells might they might stop making their chicken noodle soup
right or in this case, it was soup that was
on sale, so who knows what the price is going
to go back to? You know, well, that's true. So um.
One of the other things that scarcity produces is this
(29:49):
idea that there 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, um cognitive bias of 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 finger link, which is a fifteen dollar toy, but
people were crazy for those things that either last year
or the year before, and like just about anybody can
afford this fifteen dollar toy. So even if you're like
I have not throughout the year, you're down on your luck,
maybe you're unemployed or you're unemployed, Um, things just aren't
(30:32):
going your way. You could still camp out and wait
for that late night restocking of finger links 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 finger link, which
makes it all the more sweet. And then let's also
not forget. Like we said, this is during the holiday season,
(30:55):
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. Yeah, it's a
big deal, um, because it's it. Even if it's just
emotionally equal for a brief period of time, it's it
(31:16):
can be a big deal for somebody. Um, I'd say
we take our final break here here, and then we
come back and talk about the worst people toy flippers
right after this. All right, so I set up the
(31:54):
worst people are toy flippers. Obviously there's a lot of really,
really bad people in the world. And I'm being what hyperbolic,
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):
I'm gonna go ahead and lay that judgment down 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 um, your own like
holiday expenses and uh you are foreseeing a lack of
(32:36):
supply ahead of time, I say more power to you. Yeah,
I'm not into it. I feel the same way about
ticket scalpers. Yeah, it's exactly. I mean it's the same
thing basically. Yeah, it's it's buying up a bunch of things. Uh.
Sometimes and this is completely gross and awful. Using bots. Yeah,
(32:57):
that's the pits to especially for concert tickets, like when
bots buy up all the best concert tickets, especially our tickets. Yeah, exactly,
I think anybody uses bots on ours? Well probably not,
but um, actually, stuff you should know is is we've
seen very few bad examples of people trying to overcharge
for a sold out show. More times than not, it's
(33:19):
a fellow listener that's like, hey, just come along, you
can sit next to me for face value, or I
don't even give it to you. 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 now. Um, but yeah,
we haven't run into that. Mostly the problem is from
um ticket outlets just charging ridiculous fees on top of
(33:43):
our ticket price. Well that makes us mad, and you
all should know we don't have control over that. Um.
We're the Eddie Vetter of podcasting, right. But if you
ever find yourself in a situation where you got shut
out of the stuff, you should know show and your
option is to not go or to pay like a
ridiculous amount, just send us an email. Will put you
on the list. Oh god, Chuck, Wow, you just opened
(34:03):
some floodgates. I mean, there's a very few list spots,
so it's not like you know right now you just
started a must have toy frenzy for the list. Look
what you've done. Oh let's get back to bots. Um.
These bots are so savvy that they can they can
buy out, they can have hundreds of credit card numbers
(34:26):
on file because sometimes they'll have like a limit to
how many things you can buy. They are all these
shortcuts in ways to bypass all of these safeguards put
into effect, including captures. They will hire foreign workers to
sit around and type in the captions to get through security.
Which I mean, if there is anything that says holiday
(34:47):
spirit more than that, I can't think of it. But
these bots can, uh can sometimes buy out something in
the second that it goes up online for regular human
to say, oh, like, all right, they've released the tickets
or the doll m right, because they they'll see. What
(35:07):
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. 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
really open the curtain for hours ahead of time, so
the body will have the page targeted and just keep
refreshing it hundreds of times a second until that sale
(35:31):
goes live, and they will have ordered scores of these
things or dozens or hundreds 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
(35:51):
of bots who take your inventory and then put it
up for sale at some exorbitant price on Amazon or
eBay or craig List or something like that. Yeah, the
worst people. So like, you don't even have to do anything,
you just stick your bots on it. Yeah. I stand
by it, even for the enterprising person who I just
I don't know. I don't have a have a big
(36:12):
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.
Hey man, that's that's fine. Yeah, I'll die on this hill. Okay,
that's fine. So if you are one of those people
that Chuck hates and you want to be enterprising, there
(36:33):
is a article written by Lisa Smith. It's on Investipedia
and it's called the Guide to reselling toys at Christmas
for extra money, which is very innocuous. Um. Then there's
some tips actually that make a lot of sense. If
you want to do this, do you want to go
over them or you're gonna remain mute? You can go
over so you could talk to parents if you wanted
(36:54):
to write Chuck, that's right, Josh good idea. Um there,
because they know what kids want. You can talk to
kids themselves, which makes sense. I mean, just go right
to the horse's mouth. I've already said the same thing, Joshua. Um,
you can talk to Santa. I thought this was pretty enterprising.
Like imagine if you are trying So what you're trying
to do here is to identify what toy you want
(37:16):
to buy as early ahead of time as possible, so that, um,
you can have identified the hot season, the hot toy
of the season, and bought them before the demand really struck.
So you talked to mall, Santa's hang out in stores,
you can talk to cashier's stock people, all that stuff,
because not only will they know what toy you need
(37:36):
to look out for, they'll know when these new supplies
are coming in. Maybe slip on 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. Deduct that bribery, right, and then um, you
can actually hang out in chat rooms. There's entire websites
that are dedicated to this kind of stuff that are
(37:56):
um you know that that say like, here's the toys
we're looking for or I spotted some at this you know,
Walmart or whatever. This this stock guy said that Walmart
replenish his own on Thursdays at ten. Um. There's a
lot of stuff you can do if you really wanted
to put the leg work in great or you could
(38:16):
put all that energy into doing something worthwhile. Right, I
know what you're talking about. This is the like the
Michael Larson approach to the holidays, the man who got
no whammy's on pressure. Luck. Oh, I had no problem
with him. Okay, this is virtually the same thing. It's
(38:36):
somebody Michael Larson wasn't. Uh, 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, right, Uh, he would have, though,
I'm sure of it. Oh goodness. So that's what you
(38:59):
can do if you want to flip toys and ruin
the holidays. As far as Chuck's concerns, um 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 bots onto websites or whatever. But they are out
there and they do. They do actually create competition and
(39:19):
help drive that frenzy even further, because remember what's behind
must have toys a scarcity marketing, and if there are
people out there actively contributing to the scarcity, that's a
big deal. Here's what I want to hear from. I
want to hear from, uh some women listeners who let's
say you go on a on a on a date
(39:39):
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 like, what's that?
Because you know, around Christmas time, I go out and
buy like tons of toys that I know little kids
really really want, and then I'll mark them up so
I can make a lot of money off their parents
who may not be able to afford it. Right, and
just tell me how that date goes from there? Yeah?
(40:02):
Can it? Does it have to be a man and
a woman? Can it just be anybody? It can be anybody?
But you know, I think the guy that does this
is the guy that I just did that voice for,
who's apparently from Jersey. They're all from New Jersey. Okay, So, um,
I feel like we've learned a lot here. We've talked about,
(40:23):
you know, how a toy becomes a must have toy
of a season usually has to do with some sort
of some combination of of advertising and buzz marketing as
long or as well as um scarcity the flippers get involved. Um,
I think, and I want to back this up, Chuck,
there's not a lot of stuff out there on this.
(40:43):
This all had to be brought together. This is kind
of one of those rare stuff you should know THESS
about what makes must have toy must have toy. But
I think it's I think it holds up. Should we
talk about some of the big toys of this year? Yes,
So those lists that are out there, this helps me.
Actually we put a bunch of well that's the point.
That's we're trying to help you and all of the
(41:04):
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 know now because
we have good people in our audience, so that all
those lists that are out there now we kind of
compiled and cross referenced them. A number of them lists
(41:25):
from Target, Toys, toughts, pets, and more. That's just one Amazon,
the Today's Show, Toy Insider, the Spruce Crazy Coupon Lady
who had a post about toy flipping, Walmart, and New
York Magazine. All those lists we looked at and we
found ones that appeared on at least a couple, if
(41:46):
not more, And one of them, the first one, appeared
on basically every single list that we saw. Yeah, this one,
the balloom doll b l U m E. Nothing to
do with the rest of development, but it is this
is something and that that my daughter might like. Apparently
this is another another thing you add water to uh
and it blooms. But this is I don't think it
(42:08):
hatches from an egg. I think this doll just like
grows like a chia pet mite 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. Yeah, yeah,
(42:32):
but they're also yeah, they're super affordable too, so they're
they're probably going to be the hot must have Christmas
toy of the Year's bloom Dolls Hatch the Moles are
still around. Yeah, and there's one that's um from How
to Train Your Dragon Toothless Dragon, the Baby Dragon. They
have a Hatch the Mole version of him. What else
really Barbies on the list? Yeah, Barbie has a dream Plane,
(42:55):
which I saw in a couple of lists where um, yeah,
it's a for Barbie. There's like a snack cart and
everything comes with a dog that I guess lives on
the plane. There's also l O L Surprise? Have you
heard of that? I hadn't heard of it either until
we started researching this, But they're like a whole brand
um and a lot of these, including bloom Dolls in
(43:18):
l O L 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 because our
good friend, uh Joe Randazzo did his Lego Man unboxing
videos that were still to me one of the funniest
things I've ever seen. Yes, great plug by the way,
(43:40):
but they still do that, like they're still unboxing is
a huge trend and that's worked its way into toys,
so L O L 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 think that's his last name,
(44:01):
but that's his his YouTube channel and guarantee we talked
about Ryan's World in that Unboxing Toys episode. But um,
he's got all sorts of toys that are um out
where you like, you just don't know what you're getting
when you open the thing. It's just surprise unboxing the
weird sub genre on YouTube of unboxing or I remember
(44:21):
we talked about the one where the lady's hands would
just play with things. Yeah, it was the Yeah remember
she was like pepper Peg. Yeah, it's so interesting. Uh,
I'll tell you the one on the list though that
I like that. Um, I usually look at the toys
that I'm like, what, I like to play this with
my daughter, because that's important. I can't be bored out
of my mind, you know. Oh yeah, good point. Uh.
(44:43):
And this lego make your own movie kit looks pretty
cool to me. Yeah. I was kind of hartened to
see that on on a couple of lists, you know,
because it's like, this is about motion movies you can make. Yeah,
it's thoughtful, it's inventive. Yeah, where it's it's yeah, there's
They have a bunch of different stages and backgrounds and props,
(45:04):
including a banana. It's great. So you learn how to make.
Are you gonna get get her? That? I think you
should anytime? Buddy? Can we make a flaming hoop out
of a coat hanger and do things with that too? Okay? Um?
And then the other one was the Fisher Price link
A moles, which are super cute, including the smooth move sloth.
(45:28):
Hey I'm down with Fisher Price yea, so huge, huge
right now? Yeah? Do you remember Playmobile? Play Mobile? Remember
that they were like the vaguely European kind of um
action people, but there was nothing like violent or military
about them. They would explore or um. I probably recognize them.
(45:49):
I definitely know that name. You You've seen it a
million times. Right when you see it, you I'll 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,
I see him right there. Sure, yeah, there you go. 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 up,
(46:14):
definitely does hold up. You got anything else, nothing else?
You're gonna go buy a bunch of toys and flip them.
I got nothing else except for twenty tho hatch homles
in my garage. Man. Here's the other thing, though, Chuck, like,
you're taking a risk because you've got to predict what
they must have toys. And if you if you guess wrong,
you've got twenty thousand hatch moles that nobody wants. But
I'd love to see that happen in real life. I
(46:38):
guarantee it happened. So just keep an ear out, Uh,
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 your
kids some Christmas toys. That's right? Is that a good
way to sign off? That's great? Okay? Since I said, uh,
(46:59):
is this a good way to sign off. It's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this from a teacher.
We always like to shout out our teachers and their
their students. Hey, guys, just sending one of what I'm
sure is among infinite thank you so that you receive
as a teacher who regularly references knowledge I gained from
(47:19):
listening to your show in my class. My students, unwittingly, Uh,
and I are eternally grateful for your work. They give
a hearty laugh whenever I steal your characters. Took Took
the wise proto Homo sapien and erg the folly prone
genetic defect to elucidate points about the evolution of early humans.
(47:39):
I knew you wouldn't mind my poaching that you think, John,
you'll be hearing from our lawyers. John, you're the toy
flipper of teachers. Just kidding, Uh. The reason I'm writing
is to say I think you should not be discouraged
by any listener mail you received telling you to keep
your opinions to yourself. My favorite episodes are the ones
where either or both of you have so strong feelings
(48:00):
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 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 L. Bushkin. So thank you, Mr. Lebushkin,
(48:22):
and hello to uh your students. Mr Lebushkin's class. Yeah, hi, guys,
you's got a cool teacher. Yeah, he does sound pretty cool.
He's doing God's work, teaching the next generation. That's right.
I hope he doesn't work in a public school because
he's gonna be like, can't say God's work. If you
want to get in touch with us like Mr Lebushkin did,
(48:44):
or if you're a toy flipper who has an argument
against Chuck's argument, we want to hear from you. Bring
You can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
com and check out our social links, and you can
also send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
(49:06):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows h
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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