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mints wrote:

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manamazing55 wrote:
To a lesser degree, but remember when Tickle Me Elmo came out? Mothers arguing, pushing other Mothers to get their kid that years hottest Xmas toy. That manufacturer easily couldve just produced thousands more, but they dont want that. They want the buzz, they want the talk......essentially, they want the THIRST for their products.

They did end up producing enough to go around, it just took months to ramp production up to fill the demand. Stores didn't think it was going to be as big a seller as it ended up being and when they put in requests for a lot more stock in Q3, the manufacturers couldn't meet the demand in time to get the product in for Christmas. I was working one of my first jobs back then at a Toys 'R Us, missed the madness for christmas, but was working there when they finally started filling the rain check orders, by May of 97 they'd ended up pushing out over 1M units if I recall correctly

Anyone remember when buying/flipping toys was the big thing? The Orange Card Star Wars figures in the mid-late 90s made some people a LOT of money. 

edit: had my timeline wrong, it's been years since I was doing that sort of thing.

thanks for the info, thats a good perspective. I didnt know the specifics, I just remmeber how hot that toy was.

In the same breath, JB/Nike knew this release was going to be big, they COULD have produced more, they just chose not to for the reasons I earlier stated.

The figurine example is a good one, I remember grown men buying full shipments at Wal Mart of Xmen figures back in the 90s. I personally think reselling in general is sickening, but thats the world we live in. But the biggest difference between buying up action figures to resell, vs. buying up shoes, is that the only "hurt" that comes from the toys is that some people that want them dont get them, in this shoe game situation people are PHYSICALLY getting hurt. Thats a huge issue