You know, I want to give toy companies my money. I really do. I’m single, have no kids, and have disposable money ready to be spent on toys. I am an adult male that still collects these plastic bookmarks of my various interests.
I want to, but I can’t. Because sometimes toy companies — oh, let’s not be coy and call it Hasbro — don’t seem to want my money.
Let’s take an imaginary Internet tour. Let’s try to buy something hotly desired in the toy collecting community. Let’s say — an AIM soldier.
Back yet? Find many?
NO YOU DID NOT.
And you know why you did not? Because for some reason, the figure that people are going to want to buy multiples of is not readily in stock and available for purchase, even at Hasbro’s very own store. Go on, go back there and check. See that little red out of stock symbol. Mocking, isn’t it? Bastardly, isn’t it?
Yes. Yes it is.
Now go ahead, look for Hydra.
Back so soon? Yeah, your virtual cart is frickin’ empty isn’t it?
What about… oh, let’s say Stormtroopers. You can’t just buy one. They’re a product that just screams to be bought in multiples. Hell, you’d probably buy one with every purchase, just because, wouldn’t you? Or you’d toss one in your cart at Hasbro’s shop just to make it to that magical free shipping limit. Wouldn’t you? WOULDN’T YOU?
NO I’M NOT SCREAMING!
Well you can’t. You can’t, I can’t, we all can’t. Because they’re out of stock.
Oh sure, they may go up for five magical seconds randomly in the middle of the day so that everyone can scramble around like homeless people fighting over stale bread only to wander off dazed and toothless and vaguely confused as to whose hair this is in your hand. But you won’t be there, will you? No, because you’ve got a life outside of jabbing F5 on some stupid website hoping that out of a 24-hour day you’ll hit those magic five seconds when a toy goes up and you’ll be able to jam it into your cart before some other slack-jawed mouth breather who is already making his eBay listing gets it first.
“Did they go up?” You’ll ask as you see the forum suddenly grow another page. “They went up, didn’t they? SON OF A BASTARD PUDDING.”
So you start to wonder why this is so hard. Why you’ve been programmed to a Pavlovian state to open up a toy company’s website whenever you hear the words “It’s up!” you don’t even know what’s up anymore. Suddenly your cart is filled with 13 My Little Ponys and you’re holding someone else’s hair. And that does not make you the office favorite. Not at all.
People have whined endlessly about Black Widow since 2012, when she was the only Avenger left behind. So you’d think two years of pent-up desire for that kind of butterfaced chick would mean that people would be swimming in them. But no, right now you know what you find if you go to Hasbro’s site to buy her?
Yeah, that’s what you get.
Two years of pent-up desire for nothing. Jeebus on crackers, am I at the prom again?
It’s easy to get caught up in the lust also. I’ve spent a fair amount of time refreshing on Amazon and at Hasbro, and my dirty little secret is I don’t even care about Black Widow’s movie figure. I mean, it’s nice, I’m sure, but do I really want it that much? I guess I must if so many other people do. I can’t just be trying to buy her just because she’s hard to find, can I?
Toy companies have become like a blind man in the elevator: pushing all the buttons.
eBay is littered with qualifiers based around these toys.
RARE!
SCARCE!
HARD TO FIND! Which is sometimes just “HTF,” which now all I see when I read that is “Hasbro? Those F%$*ers!”
Maybe I’ve grown bitter (ya think?). I got tired of this game back when ToyBiz seemed determined to keep a Deadpool out of my hands. But I got him, and I know I’ll get what I’m after this time. It’ll just take time, patience, and luck. Or something. That’s the absolute bitch of it all; I know I’ll eventually end up with what I want, somehow. But still there’s this obligatory time period of irritation, angst, and wasted time where I think maybe this time will be the last time and I’ll forever be denied that which is my birthright. Where’s Anthony Hopkins to tell me what my birthright is? He’s not here. They didn’t make Odin. Maybe for Thor 3. Where was I…
Logic doesn’t matter when I open up that Hasbro page and I see all that red looking back at me. Stormtroopers, AIM, Hydra, even a Black Widow I don’t really want that much but would buy if it were available… mocking me.
Read that again, Hasbro: I would buy that silly bitch if she were available.
IF SHE WERE AVAILABLE!
That’s a sale.
A sale is money. And I know you dinks like money, based on how much toys are nowadays. $19.99? I like how I can keep the penny. Because that’s the most important part of a twenty dollar bill: the penny I’m not paying for your toys. Nothing like a penny saved to make you feel like a frickin’ rock star. Hell, I routinely ask for change for a twenty dollar bill just to toss out the $19.99 and keep the penny. I’ve got a sock drawer full of what used to be twenty dollar bills, but are now just the single penny left from them, and when I invite women over to my house I open it up and I say, “This is how rich I am, bitches. These pennies are the fossils of once proud Twentydollarsauruses. Now come over here and tickle me in my happy place.”
“Ooh Panthro Calrissian,” they say. “You’re such a damn pimp.”
Yeah, That’s my birth name.
But the point is right now I’m not paying that remaining $19.99 for your toys either, because they’re not in stock at your store. Or on Amazon, or at Toys “backwards R” Us or at Wal-mart or Target or wherever.
I want Stormtroopers, and I want AIM, and I want Hydra. Multiples of each. And I want a Black Widow too because of that danged torso she comes with. Not the boobs, the Mandroid.
I want these things, but I can’t have them.
And I just don’t know why.
I’d go on, but I just went out of stock.