What are the foremost things that have caused uncontrollable buying frenzies in past Christmas Times? The ones that spring most to my mind are Cabbage Patch Kids, Buzz Lightyears, Tellytubbies and this year (and last) the Nintendo Wii. On this side of the pond anyway; Wii’s are notoriously hard to find, with people queing for hours only to be turned away. Has eBay quelled some of the buy-madness of yesteryear? Are Riots akin to the Cabbage Patch days a thing of the past, if you’re willing to pay through the nose on eBay? Have you yourself ever been caught up trying to get the last Turboman in the shop? And just what happens that leads to a supplier getting it so wrong when estimating demand for his product?
I remember my mom braving a riot once to get me a red Power Ranger action figure. It was like eight inches tall, hard plastic with movable joints – all the rage that year. I loved it. Wonder whatever happened to it.
Edit: Maybe “riot” is a bit strong. I do know she had to push some ladies, though.
Can’t tell which side of the pond you are from, from your location, but here in America, I can remember a huge run on “Tickle Me Elmo” dolls.
More recently I think the Nintendo 64 was a big one - either that or one of the Sony Playstations.
They have to estimate demand many months in advance. Those ships carrying stuff from China don’t move all that fast, and that’s after you’ve got the factories going. All they can project for is an average sale. Especially as the ‘must-have toy’ thing is often a TV news-fed hysteria, a reporter with a mission to find a panic-buy somewhere, there’s nothing any supplier could do.
cormac262, I think you’re thinking of Playstation 2. People went crazy over furbees (sp?) too.
Furby.
I had one. I kept it at work and one of the tech guys brought his in, mine caught a virus and got sick, and I ended up giving it away.
The proverbial “slow boat from China”?
I imagine the makers of Tickle-Me Elmo did not expect Rosie O’Donnell to hype their toy on her talk show. That’s what sent that toy through the roof.
My niece was little that year and Mom and I just happened to notice them in Target maybe this time of year. We thought it was cute, we bought her one. The next week women were ripping each others’ wigs off in the aisles for them. <shrug> We probably should have sold it, but we didn’t feel that was right.
Back in the Tickle Me Elmo days a friend and I were able to get our hands on 20 of them at wholesale through a miracle of luck. We sold the little red bastards outside of the local Toys R Us for $50 cash eash and were done in a matter of 20 minutes. Of course those were the recreational substance days so it wasn’t well spent, but it was fun as hell watching those folks scramble over to my rusty old Chevy Nova to deal with two stoners willing to part with a little fuzz and plastic for the cash.
I remember my mother driving to a toy store in a really bad neighborhood in Chicago - so bad that my dad insisted on going with her with a loaded gun in his coat - so she could get us the Real Ghostbusters cartoon action figures. She must have made 100 phone calls before finding a store that had them all, including the car, Slimer, and the oddly white haired Egon.
ETA - **Zofia ** is a better person that I am. 
Well, yes, boats still don’t move fast when they’ve got thousands of miles to cover. And organising a place on one of these isn’t as simple as turning up at the post office to send your grandson’s presents.
But in all seriousness, it’s the manufacturing issues which are the least likely to be turned around in a few weeks.
To show you how things never change, the Teddy Bear was introduced around Christmas of 1905. Between then and the Christmas of 1906, the demand for Teddy Bears was so great, there are editorials and stories in major newspapers bemoaning the fact that the Doll had been supplanted by this upstart new toy. It was akin to the Beanie Baby craze.
Oh man! Was that at the Hickory Point Kay-Bee sometime during the early 90’s? Cause I was there, man! I was shopping for plastic dinosaurs for Bonzo, vaguely aware that there was some sort of Power Ranger frenzy going on (“Why are all these people here?”, but Power Rangers left him cold since they weren’t 60-foot-tall carnivores with teeth like steak knives, so I remained unexcited) and I’ll always remember seeing this gray-haired sixty-something woman shoving people in order to get closer to the Power Rangers display. And then emerging from the scrum with a red one, held aloft triumphantly.
I was, like, “Wow”.
The White Power Ranger was huge on year.
Tamagachis.
Tickle Me Elmo.
Cabbage Patch Kids (my MIL gave one to 26 year old me–she said it was the “image” of her son, my husband. Said doll had red hair, freckles and green eyes. said husband has brown hair, no freckles, and hazel eyes. MIL is batshit insane).
This year’s hot toy is anything certified lead-free 
I remember my mom pushing her way through a frenzy of similarly Xmas-shopping moms in the 1970s to get an Evil Knievel wheely-popping & jumping-over-stuff on his motorcycle action toy for my little brother. I may be wrong, but I think the limited supply of these toys had to do with the oil crisis of the day leading to fewer plastic items being manufactured (I was only about 12 at the time and didn’t pay that close attention).
Mom got one.
Here is an article explaining this year’s Wii shortage. They expected a slowdown on demand in the summer (which is what usually happens) so they could stockpile for the holiday. There was no slowdown, though. Actually getting a Wii isn’t that hard; you just buy a bundle from Gamestop or Wal-Mart. You just have to be willing to shell out $600. (You’re paying the same for everything as if you’d bought them individually; they’re just forcing you to buy several things at once.)
Classic Christmas for everyone!
Carved wooden cars for the boys, handmade dolls for the girls.
(In actuality this is quite close to what I am doing…)
I remember getting a Cabbage Patch kid. Actually the ones I remember were mentioned. Furby, Elmo, Tamagotchi, Power Rangers. Most of them passed me by since I was too young to notice the frenzy and didn’t really want the toys anyway (except for the Cabbage Patch kid).
This year seems to be the damn Little Einstein Pat Pat Rocket, which is only found at Target. My mom was on a mad search for one for my nephew’s birthday in October, and couldn’t find it, and I searched the Targets around here for the damn thing until I finally found one last Wednesday. I should’ve bought the whole batch of 'em because the damn things are going anywhere from $60 - $120 on eBay now.
(And if this had been a toy for my son, I’d have said ‘screw it’ long ago, but my mom really wanted this for my nephew. She was thrilled when I called her on Wednesday (they were on their way to my house for Thanksgiving) and said I had the stupid thing sitting in my mud room waiting for her.)
I forget which Nintendo it was, but one year they were just totally unavailable; they’d sold out in about 3 minutes when they came out. And of course that was the only thing my son wanted for Christmas.
So we were visiting my grandmother out of town, and I went to a nearby mall, and while walking through, stopped in a toy store on a whim and asked if they had any. To my complete shock, someone had just returned one like 5 minutes earlier, unopened – the box still had the original manufacturer’s sticky tape on it – and I was able to pick it up. And I didn’t even have to stand in line or fight a crowd for it.
My son was too young to appreciate just how lucky he was that he didn’t have to wait several more months to get that stupid thing.
I got one, thanks to my ‘connected’ grandmother.