eBay

momcqueen · ‎12-09-2016

Reading this blog post, to be honest, I don't know whether to laugh at this woman or cry for her.

http://www.scarymommy.com/sara-gruen-hatchimal-resale-charity/?utm_source=FB

momcqueen · ‎12-09-2016

Highlights: "A New York Times best-selling author tried to cash in on the Hatchimal craze and bought up $23,500 worth of the trendy toy in hopes of reselling them for many times their retail price. She claims it was for a good cause, but the internet is not having it."

momcqueen · ‎12-09-2016

I happen to think these are the dumbest toys around. This was my opinion from the onset and I wouldn't carry them in my store for all the tea in China. I have to stand behind the toys I sell and I am honest in my assessment of them. If I had one to list, the Item Title would have to read 'Hatchimal: Dumbest Toy of the Season'.

This lady, who apparently is a best-selling author, now has subject matter based on this experience for another book: How NOT to Resell Toys for Fun and Profit.

I sympathize with the death threats she says she's getting over this but, truly, you need to do your research no matter what business you tenure into. I think this is the crux of why so many sellers fail on ebay. At some point in the future, this woman's misery will serve as a case study in business schools.

And some kid(s) ran rampant in her storage area and hatched a bunch while she wasn't looking. Honestly!

momcqueen · ‎12-09-2016

Also, this might be the worst sales pitch ever: "'I have a fortune invested, only one venue to offload them, and in only three weeks they will magically transform into useless pumpkins that will take up space in my office FOREVER, and have caused my financial ruin.'"

Like I said, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

momcqueen · ‎12-09-2016

Oh wait, no. She only dreamt her Hatchimals hatched.

Update: http://www.phillyvoice.com/sales-and-online-hatred-arrive-wake-hatchimals-nightmare-story/

She's also had her limits lifted as a result of the attention.

lucitabby · ‎12-10-2016

Quite pathetic.

silverpinups · ‎12-10-2016

Greed is the Devil's seed!

momcqueen · ‎12-10-2016

There are so many things wrong with her scenario, I hardly know where to begin.

First of all, she didn't cause the shortage. It's not as if she robbed a Hatchimals delivery truck, she herself bought them from re-sellers at triple the retail selling price on eBay. But in doing so, guaranteed failure. In buying 166 within two weeks alone, she created a false economy on eBay. Which drove her own costs up by increasing demand on an already-limited supply.

She started this on American Thanksgiving. Canada has been sold-out since Canadian Thanksgiving. You can't come that late to a toy trend and expect to succeed.

She did no research into sales venues. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to question whether a venue would allow someone who's not an authorized dealer to list 166 of the hottest toy on the market. Of course there will be limits. There has to be. And the toy manufacturer has publicly taken a very dim view of resellers on this item. They're going to make it difficult to resell for anyone who isn't authorized to do so.

She spent way too much too fast. It's not like this was a sale on penicillin after a free-love music festival. It's common sense to exercise some restraint when you don't have a hot clue what you're getting into.

She drew attention to herself. Hence the death threats. And that sales pitch about her wares being useless in three weeks is just the worst. Like, seriously. Who's going to want to buy these items at six times the retail sale price when you sell it like that?

She's confused about a noble cause. She needs to pay legal fees to fund research for her book. Well, la de dah. I need to sell toys to feed my children. Another seller needs to pay their hydro bill. Yet another is trying to pay for post-secondary education. This other guy needs a new artificial leg. Or chemo drugs. Whatever. We all have bills to pay, hers aren't automatically more special than anyone else's.

She picked the wrong bandwagon. These toys are stupid. They're stupid for $80 CAD. They're insanely stupid for $300 CAD. No child will play with them longer than the day it takes them to hatch. They don't do anything after that, they have no arms or legs. You can't make them fly. Or race. You talk to them, they coo. Big whoop. It's an $80 stone covered in fake fur. As a parent, I don't want to waste $80 on that. I can invest $80 on a decent-sized set of brand-name LEGO building blocks that have infinite play possibilities. Or a set of My Little Ponies. Or a pile of really great Cars characters. Those at least allow my imagination to run wild. My Hatchimal? Well, it hatched. Then I spoke to it, it cooed. We stared at each other for 15 minutes. I'm done. We're good. I'll see you at the bottom of the toy box in eight months from now.

momcqueen · ‎12-10-2016

Sorry to sound like such a jerk about this. I hated these toys the moment I laid eyes on them.

momcqueen · ‎12-10-2016

And here is the adult equivalent of a Hatcnhimal this season: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-315-military-vs-mefloquine-top-holiday-books-of-2016-harry-bens...

i.am.vivian · ‎12-12-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
http://www.phillyvoice.com/sales-and-online-hatred-arrive-wake-hatchimals-nightmare-story/

She's also had her limits lifted as a result of the attention.

I'd read about all this somewhere else and wondered how the story was progressing. Yes, it sounds like she can sell the whole lot on eBay after all. I guess the limit is to prevent people from selling who don't actually have any. She obviously does.

I liked what that one commenter said, "If she’s so scared of being stuck with these things after Christmas, how about selling them for their regular price".

There are lots of people using the 'financial woes' way of selling these. Maybe they do it on everything they sell. But for this toy, I have read many "please help me" sales pitches. There is one on now. Last week a seller was asking around $20,000 USD with a "will someone rich out there help me" spiel but I don't see that listing any more. Maybe it got pulled. A lot of gimmicks in the press to sell these things.

I agree, dumbest toy ever. I googled "What is a hatchimal" and there was a video showing them. It always shows little girls and explains all the nurturing behavior that is needed. 200 years of feminism and some things never change. My gripe is that the ad quickly glosses over what they really do (or don't do) and suggests, no, actually states, that the child can "teach" the hatchimal. The thing is, kids don't differentiate between having to press certain buttons in a certain order to see a certain movement, And the idea that the toy can "learn" and perform these tasks independently. It wasn't really false advertising but I thought it misleading.

Kids love magic and for that matter so do a lot of their parents. I just think that for all the expense and trouble some are going to, one of these will end up being a needlessly expensive battery-operated let-down. Pity the kids who end up with the whole set when they could have had something really good instead.

i.am.vivian · ‎12-12-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
And here is the adult equivalent of a Hatcnhimal this season: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-315-military-vs-mefloquine-top-holiday-books-of-2016-harry-bens...

This is just a 40-years-later version of the 70s "Pet Rock". Most people here are too young to remember that, maybe not born yet. But this is all it was. A rock in a small cardboard box. Utterly useless, but it was a time of bounty, the oil boom was on, and post-60s frivolity was way ahead of "the environment" or global issues. But here it is again. A rock for sale. And people who will step over a homeless person on their way to work will order one of these for $85 USD. I thought we had evolved as a society beyond this. Guess not.

momcqueen · ‎12-16-2016

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/hatchimals-christmas-toy-price-1.3898198

i.am.vivian · ‎12-18-2016

momcqueen · ‎12-18-2016

My fear exactly.

When parents spend an arm and a leg on a must-have toy that loses allure within 96 hours, it ruins it for future all must-have toys. I honestly think this one is the worst.

Yes, I had a Cabbage patch Kid and, yes, my mother had to stake-out the store in my small town to find one but I shared it with my sister and played with that darn thing every moment of the day for three years or more. We had ours in studio portrait Christmas pictures. My grandmother taught me to sew so I could make it clothes. Because you could actually play with it, not 'interact' whatever that means. Our family of Cabbage Patch Kids grew to number eight. We adopted pink-haired knock-offs too. We LOVED them. Wrote them songs, taught them in imaginary school on weekends, I still have the Activity Books we created in Cabbage Patch size. I took mine to actual SCHOOL with me. I was already ten years old at that time!

Maybe, in a five years from now, all these kids will still be playing with their precious Hatchimals 5.0 and I will eat crow.

Gladly.

At least all that hype and money won't have been wasted.

i.am.vivian · ‎12-19-2016

http://www.wcpo.com/money/consumer/dont-waste-your-money/hatchimal-review-by-8-year-old-kinda-annoyi...

momcqueen · ‎12-19-2016

I can't resist sharing this, vivian. How do you suppose this is going to pan out?

i.am.vivian · ‎12-19-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
How do you suppose this is going to pan out?

Um, frying pan?

I am going to hope that all those bidders are, like the seller, just having a bit of fun, a game, a spoof. Because if someone who does not read English well, some old person looking to buy a legit hatchimal for a child, thinks they are getting the real thing, my ire would be difficult to contain. I must assume this is all in fun and that the 'winner' fully expects to receive a UI strike when they balk at the idea of actually paying.

There are so many sellers of ordinary things trying to cash in on that hatchimal thing. People selling ordinary doll clothes, calling them 'hatchimal clothes'. Which they can be, sure, wrap a barbie scarf around a hatchimal and there you are. But I wonder about some things, like a pretend "birth certificate". Which is wrongly named anyway because it is not a birth but a hatching. The idea of 'lets make it official', and now pay me to print off this piece of paper you could easily make at home yourself for free. And can an ordinary person offer to sell 'hatchimal' merchandise like that? A lot of handmade stuff, too. There sure is a lot of it around. So much of it is just ordinary things I think that the seller is calling hatchimal to cash in on the craze. Nothing new there.

I had wondered how it would go as Christmas approached. Surprisingly there are scores of listings for auctions starting at very low prices for these things. I haven't been keeping close track but I am wondering how many of these auctions are from those who were asking $thousands all month and now find they have a bunch of these that may not sell. No sympathy here, I'm afraid.

I do worry about people who don't read English well though. If someone is selling the box only, will a bidder know for sure that is all they are paying for? How does a person file a claim or can they? There is no claim for "Listing was vague and deceptive and I didn't fully understand it".

All that is another reason I don't much like these do-or-die Christmas toy crazes.

Well now that's not very cheery, is it. 🙂

i.am.vivian · ‎12-19-2016

Just to sweeten things up a little, you can have your hatchimal and eat it too. Or not have it but eat it. Or is it better to have it and not eat it than to eat it and not have it.

http://cookiescupcakesandcardio.com/?p=8855