What is the Hot Holiday Toy?

[marigirls]

You know how every year there is the Hot Holiday Toy that is super hard to find and selling for ridiculous prices on ebay? This year, there doesn't seem to be any. I know my local stores have an abundance of toys. I thought the Wii U was going to be impossible to find but I see both versions still in stock at Walmart.

What do you guys think?

[lalacr8zy]

Yeah, the Furby made a comeback, but there a ton of those in the stores! I'm really not sure what the "hot" ticket item is this year!

[LalalucysMom]

I think target has done a good job of restocking bc they're the only store here that has good stock. My walmarts and TRU are sold out of regular lalaloopsy dolls and the ninja turtle action figures. But I'm seeing rather well stocked shelves, even seeing tons of Monster High which was impossible to find this time last year. Maybe manufacturers just pumped tons out this year.

[bananasmom]

We've heard that something called "Doc McStuffins" is the hot toy this year. We don't know a lot about it ... Banana watched part of the show once, but quickly lost interest. Of course, it's geared towards kids younger than she is, so that was probably why. It's probably a great show that she would have loved a few years back.

We actually ran into someone who was looking for one of these at a TRU recently and there weren't any left. (We ended up talking her into getting Lalaloopsy Sew Cute Patient as a replacement.)

[LalalucysMom]

Yes... DocMcstuffins. I almost said that. In fact my daughter wanted the Doc McStuffins Dr bag and I could not find it. I had to buy a generic one. The Disney store is sold out of all the plush characters too. My kids love the show but they are 2 and 5. I couldn't tell w/ Doc and the ninja turtles if they were flying off the shelves or if the shows were just too new to have a lot of product out yet. I kept hearing about Doc Mcstuffins Toys but I haven't seen any. And I was glad I bought my sons 11" turtles months ago bc they're only at TRU and they've been sold out since November. But I'm still seeing Lalaloopsy on the hot toy lists. All the girls we know have asked for them. Also every time I'm in the lala section I hear adults saying, "yea this is what she said she wanted" I'm always answering lala questions when I'm in that aisle, lol.

[marigirls]

I've seen Doc McStuffins at my TRU. My kids don't really care for it and they are 1 and 5.

[zt]

I would say that the Wii U is definitely a hot "toy" this year, but you're not going to have much trouble finding one because Nintendo actually managed to successfully meet demand. A lot of people have the impression that this means nobody wants it, but it has actually sold quite well so far. Out of the 462,000 that were shipped to the US, 400,000 were sold in the first week. Not too shabby considering that it is a bit pricey. And although the competition is technically inferior, the other consoles are also quite a bit cheaper.

But with that said, it's not THE hot toy. I agree that there doesn't appear to be one this year. We haven't really had too many hot toys over the last few years. Last year, I would say it was Skylanders (definitely not this year; they completely flooded the market). Before than, I can't remember anybody going crazy over anything since those Zhu Zhu Pets.

[marigirls]

I remember the Zhu Zhu pets craze. TRU put a limit as 1 per person for them. My kids weren't into them so I never bought them but I remember seeing a line of people waiting just to get one. Now Skylanders, my kids were crazy about. Even that died down. I asked my son if he wanted the giants and he was like, no. He was excited about them we he saw the game trailer months ago but not so much now.

[zt]

I was excited too, but as always, Activision got greedy and started making way too much junk. On top of the 16 or so new characters, there are multiple variants of most of them, and they released new versions of all of the original characters with new poses and abilities. I don't care too much about the stuffed animals and playsets and hundreds of other non-gaming products, but releasing so many figures all at once completely drove me off. Now I wish I could just get rid of most of these, but now a lot of the old figures are practically worthless. The worst part is that my most valuable ones are ones that I like and want to keep. Go figure.

From a kid's perspective, I imagine the whole concept probably just got boring. I mean, the first game really wasn't all that exciting to begin with. It was like Disney Universe, but with half of the excitement and no co-op mode.