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Gabe Ortiz is a cop.
His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late.
He was the head of this gang.
You're going to push that line for the cause.
Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew.
Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey, everybody.
As is our annual custom, we are raising money for our favorite charity, the Cooperative for Education, which helps break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala by making sure that kids who otherwise wouldn't have an education get to school.
That's right.
And here is this year's call to action.
You can join co-ed for 20 a month to collectively sponsor students in the Rise Youth Development Program.
And if you set up that gift by December 19th, you can have a chance to win a virtual Zoom hangout with Josh and I.
We do it every year and it's a lot of fun.
That's right.
You can go to cooperativeforeducation.org slash SYSK, set up your $20 a month sponsorship.
You can also go make a one-time donation if you like, and we may see you for a virtual hangout this January.
Thank you for giving.
Happy holidays, everybody.
This is Chuck here with one of our episodes.
For our Stuff, You Should Know, 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist.
We decided to put this together.
Thought it'd be a fun little holiday idea to kind of gather up some of our toy-centric episodes and release them this December all packaged up.
So here we are with, I think this is the first one, either the first or the second one on the list.
And the episode title is, What Makes a Must-Have Christmas Toy?
If you want to know, listen in and find out.
Happy holidays, everybody.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryan over there and there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know.
Early Christmas-a-dish.
Yeah, we're kicking it off early.
Like the rest of the retail world.
Yeah, man.
This year you could find Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas stuff in stores at the same time.
Like it was just the most normal thing in the world.
Yeah.
But you don't follow me on Twitter, and you should.
I'm not on Twitter.
Well, I'm saying you should get on Twitter to follow me.
No, thank you.
But at 7.30 in the morning on November 1st, the day after Halloween, I tweeted, Merry Christmas.
I got a lot of hate back for it.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
What do you do on Twitter?
Do you just poke people like that?
Yeah, pretty much.
Just troll.
I got you.
Yeah.
Well, that was my plug for Twitter.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Here we go.
So, let's see.
Back in 1983, Chuck, you were?
Twelve.
Twelve.
Okay.
I was seven.
You didn't have a Cabbage Patch Kid, did you?
Well, there's a story there, if you really want to know.
I think you've told it before, but let's have it.
Well, we bought my sister.
One of the very first little people is what they were called before.
They were Cabbage Patch Kids.
That's right.
In Helen, Georgia, when they were handmade by Xavier Roberts.
Who, I recently learned, stole that idea from a woman and took it as his own and made millions of dollars off of her idea.
Yeah.
I mean, I wanted to maybe we'll do a short stuff about that.
I want to do a full length episode.
But we I mean we definitely talked about that, because I think we have talked about, like must have toys of the past and maybe last year's or the year before is Christmas edition.
Yeah, and she got this doll.
Its name was Chuck, which was kind of funny because that's my name.
That's so funny.
And it was a big deal.
I think it was like the number 70-something or 80-something made, and now it's worth a lot of money.
Does she still have it?
Uh-huh.
Oh, that's great.
And we'll finish with Cabbage Patch Kids, and then I'll take issue with you.
So go ahead.
Okay, I know what you're going to take issue with.
Oh, I don't know if you do know, but go ahead.
So let me start.
All right.
So back in 1983, Cabbage Patch Kids were like the must-have toy of the Christmas season.
For sure.
And from what I can tell...
They were the first must-have Christmas toy ever.
Now, that's not to say there weren't extraordinarily popular toys around Christmastime before 1983.
Star Wars very famously offered their early bird certificate package, which was basically an empty box.
That said at some point in the future you will get Star Wars figures instead of this empty box.
One of the great, great marketing gems of all time.
Yeah.
So that was a thing.
All the way back in 1952, Mr. Potato Head was a hot toy that year.
Robert the Robot was a hot toy in 1954.
And when you say hot toys, it's tough to overstate that.
Like, Robert the Robot had T-shirts in the 50s.
I didn't even know people wore T-shirts in the 50s.
Yeah.
He was in a movie.
Like, these were big deal toys.
But my premise is this.
This is my thesis, okay?
And this is my own, so I'll take the hit if it's wrong.
But that, in just the same way that there were hit movies like The Godfather or like Ben-Hur, before Jaws came along there wasn't such a thing as the summer blockbuster until Jaws came along and made the summer blockbuster a thing.
Mm-hmm.
There wasn't such a thing as the must-have toy of Christmas until the Cabbage Patch Kid came along and made that a thing.
Okay.
So what issue are you going to take?
I can't take it any longer.
You're driving me crazy.
Well, I don't think it was Cabbage Patch Kids that was the must-have toy.
The first must-have toy.
That's what I take issue with.
What was the first?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I'm just speaking from my own lifespan, and I definitely think Star Wars counts.
Because if you can sell an empty box to a kid for Christmas, then that's a pretty strong position as a must-have thing.
And, by the way, if you're listening, the reason they sold empty boxes is because they didn't know Star Wars was going to be a big thing, so Kenner didn't have as many of these made in the run-up to the film release pre-Christmas.
So they got caught with their pants down and they realized that there was a big demand, a huge demand.
Okay.
They sold like 40 million of these.
No.
40 million boxes?
I'm trying to, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
I don't know, 40 million Star Wars toys.
Okay.
Inside of a year.
So, okay, yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that.
And did you know that you can even buy these empty box kits on eBay now?
Oh, yeah, I'm sure.
I saw one listed for $1,500.
I'm not at all surprised.
And then just very quickly, I also want to point out that The biggest, most in-demand toy of my young life was the Atari Pac-Man cartridge.
Oh, boy.
That was in 1982.
Okay.
That sold 7 million cartridges.
Okay, great, great.
The numbers don't lie.
That's a big, big number.
7 million, 40 million.
You can toss big numbers out all day long.
But let me ask you this.
Okay.
For that empty box of Star Wars?
For that Atari Pac-Man cartridge?
Did a woman have her leg broken before?
Because a crowd trying to get their hands on those things turned violent.
Or before you answer.
In addition to that, did a department store manager in Charleston, West Virginia, have to arm himself with a baseball bat to defend himself from his very customers who were trying to get to the Star Wars empty box or the Atari cartridge?
I would guess that the answer is no.
Well...
I think human behaviors have changed over the years.
I don't know.
From 1982 to 1983?
Well, I guarantee I could find one violent incident about the Atari cartridge.
I'll bet you couldn't.
Well, you know, there wasn't then because they met the demand.
Okay, so that's a big part of it too, right?
So there have been, well, let's just move on from this.
The Cabbage Patch Kids, if not were the first, which they were.
Did you have one?
Yeah, yeah, Weber Dino.
You had a Cabbage Patch Kid?
Yeah, I ended up taking his head off and giving him a mohawk as I grew older, but he meant a lot to me.
Not to be too like gender binary here, but I didn't know a lot of boys that wanted the Cabbage Patch Kid.
What?
I've always broken the mold, Chuck.
Well, sure.
No, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it.
I grew up with William Wants a Doll on Free to Be You and Me, so I get it.
But that's why I just don't know.
I think a must-have Christmas toy would be one that everybody wants.
Yeah.
As far as I knew, everybody wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid.
All right.
We'll just put this one to bed.
Okay.
Like a Cabbage Patch Kid with a mohawk.
That you adopted.
Yep.
You didn't buy it.
Right.
Well, that was a big thing.
Like there was some hallmarks to the idea of a must-have toy that were surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids.
Violence is one.
There was a lot of buzz that was picked up by the media.
And one of the ways that that was generated was by –
I think Coleco, who owned Cabbage Patch Kids at the time, sent these dolls directly to reporters.
That was a big one.
And the fact that there was not enough supply to meet the demand.
These things kind of came together to make Cabbage Patch Kids a must-have Christmas toy.
And this has been carried on as a tradition ever since then, ever since that very, very first time in 1983 with Cabbage Patch Kids.
There were Nintendos that dominated back in 1988, 1989, and 1990.
Three years in a row, Nintendo had three different products that were like the must-have Christmas toy.
Oh, yeah.
That first game console, huge.
Oh, dude.
The Game Boy, huger, it felt like.
And then, of course, in 1990 possibly the best gaming system of all time, if you look at just relative to the time the Super Nintendo console.
Yeah.
I don't know, man.
N64 was pretty great with Goldeneye.
Oh, God.
N64 was great.
Yeah.
With Goldeneye.
I mean, like it would have been, you know, fine on its own, but the fact that Goldeneye existed was the thing that made N64 to me.
That game blew my mind.
Yeah, it was great, especially the Battle Royale where you could play your friends.
Oh, man, that was fun.
Yeah, we called it Hunt and Chase.
I used to get so mad in those.
That's the only time I ever got mad playing video games because I don't do that thing where you play online and you can exact revenge on people.
So I did not take it well when my friend snuck up behind me and shot me in the head.
Right.
Yeah, that was always a bummer.
What about Tickle Me Omo?
That was a big one thanks to Rosie O'Donnell.
I was a little old for that.
Oh, really?
I was in my mid-20s.
I had one.
Oh, yeah?
Well, you were in late high school.
Not really.
Yeah, this was 1996.
This was post-high school even.
But this was such a craze that there was that characteristic violence where a Walmart employee was trampled while he was trying to restock the display.
Late at night, I believe.
But he had a pulled hamstring, injuries to his back, his jaw, his knee, broken rib, a concussion.
Yeah.
And it continues on.
Like I haven't read about any violence from Hatchimals, but from 2016 to 2018 they were the, if not one of the top must-have toys of the year.
I hate those things.
Hatchimals?
Mm-hmm.
How come?
Because you have to put it in a dish or a bowl that you eat out of and you have to leave it there, and leave it there, and leave it there, and then it hatches into a garbage toy.
Yeah.
So my experience is that they're pretty good.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
So you like your Hatchimal?
Yeah.
What are you talking?
Is it like animatronic?
Huh?
Is it animatronic?
I'm talking about Hatchimals, yeah.
Okay.
So I don't know anything about the dish.
My experience is from my niece, and I don't remember any dish.
Oh, wait.
Are we talking about two different things?
This is the thing you put in water?
Yeah.
No, no, no.
If you put it in water, you'll electrocute yourself when you touch it.
Okay, maybe I'm thinking of something else.
This is like an animatronic thing that hatches from an egg, but you have to teach it and train it and raise it and give it attention and everything.
It's a bit like the Tamagotchi, but like an animatronic pet.
Oh, I got you.
Now I'm thinking of the thing that you.
It's an egg that you put in water and after a few days it hatches into a garbage toy.
Yeah, no, that's not this.
Gotcha.
Hatchimals are much different.
Okay.
So there is this tradition of a must-have Christmas toy and you can find all you want about them every year because they're everywhere all the time and the media reports on this kind of stuff and they're on TV and there's ads and there's like social media stuff.
Now,
But there's like a really big question that doesn't have a lot of press associated with it and certainly no studies or anything that I could find.
But there's a question, Chuck, like how does a toy become a must-have Christmas toy?
Well, let's take a break and we'll get to the bottom of it right after this.
I'm Stephen Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut.
I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product.
With every sip, you get a little something different.
Visit Gentleman'sCutBourbon.com for your nearest Total Wines or BevMo.
This message is intended for audiences 21 and older.
Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky.
For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit Gentleman'sCutBourbon.com.
Please enjoy responsibly.
Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us.
Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths.
Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas.
32 years total law enforcement experience.
But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built an entirely different legacy.
He was the head of this gang, and nobody was going to tell him what to do.
He going to push that line for the cause.
Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry is murdered, Gabe is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw coming.
My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about.
Like my mom started screaming my dad's name and I just heard one gunshot.
The Brothers Ortiz is a gripping true story about faith, family and how two lives can drift so far apart and collide in the most devastating way.
Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey everybody, as is our annual custom, we are raising money for our favorite charity, the cooperative for education, which helps break the cycle of poverty in guatemala by making sure that kids who otherwise wouldn't have an education get to school.
That's right, and here is this year's call to action.
You can join coed for 20 a month to collectively sponsor students in the rise youth development program and if you set up that gift by december 19th, you can have a chance to win a virtual Zoom hangout with Josh and I.
We do it every year and it's a lot of fun.
That's right.
You can go to cooperativeforeducation.org slash SYSK, set up your $20 a month sponsorship.
You can also go make a one-time donation if you like, and we may see you for a virtual hangout this January.
Thank you for giving.
That was quite a setup, huh?
I think so.
So back in the day, when you were shopping for Christmas, if you were a kid or a parent, it didn't matter.
Right.
You knew exactly what to do.
You knew exactly how to do it.
There was no frills, no nothing.
It was all just holiday joy and the goodness of the Christmas holiday season.
That's right.
Okay?
That is correct.
And you learned what you wanted, if you were a kid, from two things Saturday morning, cartoon commercials and whatever your catalog was.
The Sears Wish Book is certainly one.
Service Merchandise Catalog was another big one for us.
Yeah, there's Montgomery Ward's catalog.
Yeah, of course.
And you put this together and you introduced me to a website called Wishbook Web.
That might as well be called timesuckcom.
Yeah, it's pretty great, isn't it?
Because someone has gone through and scanned...
Is it just Sears wishbooks?
No, no.
It's Sears, JCPenney, and Montgomery Ward.
And then I think there's the occasional – what store is that here or there?
Right.
They have scanned these entire wishbooks up to 1996.
Which everyone knows is the cutoff date for nostalgia.
That's right.
From the earliest days of 1933 –
And, boy, let me tell you, dude, and I know you know this because you've done it.
If you go through and spend a few minutes clicking through these things in the years where you were like 6, to 12 waves of nostalgia wash over you.
Like John Hodgman would succumb to these waves.
Yeah, I know.
It's amazing.
I remember some specific pictures.
I remembered the NFL section alone brought tears to my eyes and I forgot how much they hyped football back then.
You just can't stop crying.
It was crazy.
The clothes, the alarm clocks, the clock radios, the tech section.
It was off the charts for me looking through this.
I almost did nothing else today.
Yeah, I know.
It is.
Wishbook Web is pretty awesome.
Like somebody went through and scanned every single page of these several hundred page each catalogs for decades worth of catalogs.
It is God's work.
And just to get laughs by like seeing the two four-year-olds posing in bathrobes.
It's really, really funny.
Right.
One of them's got like a pipe that blows bubbles.
Oh, my God.
This is just amazing.
What a great website.
Yeah.
So Wishbook Web has kind of preserved how you used to figure out what you wanted for Christmas, which was you'd go through these wishbooks or these catalogs or whatever, and then you'd tell your parents you'd dog ear them, maybe drop some hints.
It was the correct way.
The 21st century has kind of an updated version of that, but it still kind of follows the same general contours, right where there are lists still right.
And like catalogs.
But now it's not just department stores that have like the market cornered on them.
Like that's actually kind of gone away.
It's very tough to find a department store catalog.
I believe Meyers still does that.
I think they're kind of like a Midwestern Target.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Yeah, and they have a toy catalog that they put out still, I believe, to this year.
Well, now you get the restoration hardware Christmas catalog.
Right, or Ikea.
Yeah.
But there's lists everywhere and it seems like every retailer has one, or all the major retailers have one.
And depending on where it's coming from, some are more trustworthy or above the boards or objective than others when saying like these are the must-have toys.
Like on one end of the spectrum, you have like third-party websites and publications and organizations like The Spruce or Toy Insider or Toys Tots, Pets and More.
And they actually evaluate the toys when they make their lists.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just different now.
And I don't think it's nostalgia, like thinking things were better back then.
But it seemed easier and better to let a kid sift through a catalog and pick out stuff than I guess.
What are you supposed to do today?
Like sit down with your kid at one of these websites and look at the top 20 hot toys and say what do you want?
Yeah.
Like, I don't know how it works these days.
I don't know.
Maybe instead of, like, dog-earing the pages, you send your parents links.
I'm sure you do, actually.
You know?
Yeah.
But, I mean, if your kids are too young to be on the Internet, I'm not sure how to do it.
Because I could hand my four-year-old a catalog and say, pick out some stuff.
It'd be great.
Right.
But I'm not going to say hey, just log on to the Spruce and go scroll down until you find something you like.
Right.
Stay out of their parents' section.
I mean, what do you do?
You literally have a kid, Chuck.
What do you do?
I don't know.
I mean, we just buy things that we think she might like.
So there's like a whole world out there of like lists and websites that show toys and stuff that she's unaware of.
Oh, sure.
Oh, wow.
She's got a big surprise ahead of her.
I guess so.
That's great.
I'm excited for actually yeah, but I mean, you definitely feel like you're sort of stabbing in the dark.
Let's do like, I mean, a parent can go through and look at those lists Mm-hmm, but you know, kill me.
Well, a lot of people are excited about that kind of thing.
They're like You're like good, this is yeah.
I don't have to like, go to the store and stand there and be like what are we getting here?
You could go to some website or USA Today or the Today Show, or whoever is partnering with some of these trusted sites like Toys Tots, Pets and More or Toy Insider.
And like they kind of take a lot of the guesswork out of you.
They're basically saying these are what experts are saying your kid is going to want.
If you go buy this, you will score a home run with your kid.
Yeah, I think my problem is I don't know what is bought and what is real reviews because, as you have dug up – and I didn't even know this
Of course they do this.
If you go on Amazon, you can spend $2 million as a retailer to be on their top list or whatever.
Yeah.
So, okay, yes.
What I saw though, was that you spend that money to nominate them, to nominate your toy for their consideration to include on the list.
Just for nomination?
I don't know how the process works, but yeah, I saw like the headlines say you pay 2 million for a slot, but if you read the finer print it's saying you pay 2 million for them to even consider it.
And then I guess I don't know how they curate it.
They actually kind of keep a closed lid on it.
But it generated like 120 million in revenue for Amazon, just to be on their list of hot toys for the year.
Walmart, they charge $10,000 a month per toy to be on their buyer's picks toy list.
And like you point out here, Walmart starts their list in August.
And you've got to wonder, is that because they're making $10,000 a pop off of this stuff?
Per month.
Yeah.
Yeah, they released theirs in late August, before Labor Day even.
And, like, this isn't like a, hey, we think these toys are going to be hot this year.
Here's the hot list of holiday toys.
And Target released theirs at the beginning of September.
I think Bullseye is the name of their mascot, dog mascot.
It's Buzz McKenzie, basically.
Yeah, Bully Bullseye.
And I couldn't see if they charge for placement or how they compile it or anything like that, which actually makes me suspect that they don't, because there's plenty of ink about Amazon and Walmart's lists and how they charge for them.
And the fact that there's not one for Target makes me think either they're really keeping a lid on it or else they actually don't charge for that.
But so there's kind of two lists where if you're a parent, you need to ask.
Naughty and nice.
Yeah, you need to ask—dog people and cat people.
That's right.
You need to ask, where is this list coming from?
And if it's coming from a third-party site, go look up the third-party site and they will tell you in their like About Us section how they determine what toys are what.
And if you really want to get that information, that's fine.
But even if Amazon or Walmart or even if Target charges for placement on their lists—
Just the very fact that those things are on their list is going to make them among the hot toys of the season.
So it's like a self-fulfilling or self-painting prophecy.
Yeah, I mean, I guess anytime you look up something on a major retailer website, those first few things are sponsored.
And they say sponsored in little letters.
Oh, sometimes they don't.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's kind of hard to discern whether or not you're looking at the real top thing or the sponsored thing.
Right, and I think with the gift lists in particular, I don't believe that they say that these are sponsored.
I think it's just like, here's the hot list according to Amazon.
Well, let's talk a bit about marketing in general around the holidays.
It's a science in a way, and they have found out through science that happy people buy more.
Not everyone's happy around the holidays, but they definitely, as marketers, play on the idea that that you are happier around the holidays.
And so you should be in the buying spirit.
Definitely when you're talking about kids, that is the case.
They pummel children with ads.
There was one study here.
University of Hertfordshire counted 100 ads in a three-hour Saturday morning kids slot.
Christmas time.
A hundred.
A hundred in a three-hour slot.
That's a lot of ads.
It is.
And then, of course, you know, children are on more than one screen these days, so they're also getting ads on.
You know when they're watching YouTube or whatever, or just on kids' websites.
There's ads everywhere.
I can't remember what episode we really kind of dove into that. advertising their children.
Oh, man.
I think it was about advertising for children.
Like, that was the sole, you know, goal.
So, the idea is that just the holiday season itself puts most of us in a pretty good mood.
And advertisers say, oh well, if we release ads that are holiday-themed, we'll be able to kind of tap into that goodwill and good mood and make you nostalgic or feel good about things.
And so...
By doing that, we'll be able to kind of tie our brand or our product to that holiday sensation.
And you'll say oh, I do want to go buy that because it makes me think of being a kid at Christmastime.
That's really basic stuff.
I mean, like, that's everywhere.
You can't get away from that in the holiday season.
And there's not even necessarily anything wrong with it.
It's just basic marketing and advertising 101 when it comes to holiday advertising.
Yeah, and the other thing we mentioned earlier in terms of marketing and this is also marketing 101 is about scarcity.
If you have a toy that there is a limited amount of, that is when you're going to find people trampling each other to get there, because people are motivated by fear.
And if you know that a toy is a must-have and there aren't many of them and they're going on sale at a certain time, it is frightening what some parents might do to secure that toy.
Yes.
So this is finally we've reached the key ingredient, right?
You've got lists of toys that are promoted and advertised and maybe even show up with their own articles in the media.
Then you have the fact that we're already kind of primed to buy because it's the holiday season.
We're in a good mood.
But when you add that scarcity marketing, it ramps it up to a totally different level.
And when you have a must-have toy that is hard to find, like you said, people will do –
Very crazy, violent, mean stuff to get it.
And there's a lot of reasons why.
Even if you're not willing to like throw an elbow to get a toy, you might still be willing to camp out at 4 am waiting for, you know, a 24-hour retailer to restock their supply of this so you can buy it.
That's unusual behavior.
And the reason why it all comes down to scarcity marketing, the idea that we have a fear of missing out, a fear of social embarrassment, a fear of our kids not loving us as much as they could had we gotten them this toy, and that all of these things, the scarcity marketing, is the real driver that kind of hypercharges must-have, toy frenzy.
Yeah, and it's not, you know, just toys.
You've seen everything from, you make a great point about Pappy Van Winkle whiskey.
Oh, I should say that's from Marketingland.
A guy named Jacob Bodsgar wrote an article on Marketingland where he cited that and the Disney Vault as really good examples.
Yeah, Disney Vault is another great one.
They were very famous for not just saying like here's all the movies we've ever made that you can buy on VHS all in one big package.
They would release them every now and then, and you knew you had a limited time to get them.
And I wasn't really hip to all this.
But my dad and his wife were way into the Disney stuff and you know they were – adamant about making sure they filled out the entire collection and really kept up with when they were going to be released, and what a big deal that was.
Yeah, that was a big one.
And Bodsgar makes a point like by making them limited and available also only for a limited time, with years, sometimes a decade in between times when you can buy these things, it creates this like frenzy to go buy them.
And it also makes them like a treasured part of that person's home.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, and you can also fake out the public a little bit and mislead them on the scarcity.
You might have a lot of the stuff and just kind of lead the public to believe like no, you better go get one right now, because they may not be around next week.
Yeah, the people who made Hatchimals Spin Master Hatchimals were really hard to find in, I think 2016, 17 and 18.
And Spin Master was basically accused of purposefully using scarcity marketing.
And for their part, they said, hey, we were totally caught off guard three years in a row.
By the, you know, the popularity of Hatchimals, other people were like, that's BS.
You can totally ramp up production pretty fast.
Another must-have toy was Fingerlings.
Remember them from, like, last year or the year before?
No.
They were like little monkeys or sloths or dragons or whatever that would hang on to your finger.
And they were little finger-sized robots that would like blink and blow kisses and do all sorts of cute stuff.
They weren't.
They were cute instead of uncanny because they weren't kind of cartoonish.
Just the words finger-sized robots together sound terrifying to me.
They would come. your throat while you slept.
But they were caught unaware, even though they really tried hard to make them hit through social media.
They were still surprised when it actually happened.
But they ramped up production.
They brought a third factory in China online.
They went from shipping via cargo boat to air transport to get supplies here faster.
And they were able to ramp up and meet demand pretty quickly.
So the idea that Hatchimals just couldn't possibly do that really smelled to a lot of people like they were purposefully using scarcity marketing.
Yeah, scarcity, I mean, it's an interesting concept because you see it everywhere.
You know they have restaurants that you know here in Atlanta Holman and Finch had the Holman and Finch burger that like one day a week like we'll sell 100 of them starting at 10 pm on this night.
And then everyone's like, oh, my God, what is in that burger?
People would line up around the block.
Yeah.
Or this is a nice little tidbit here that you dug up about supermarket experiments.
Yeah, that's from an article from Market Watch by Mark Elwood.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Even putting up a sign for soup that says limit 12 per person will make people be like oh, I should probably buy 12 of these, for whatever reason.
They might stop making their chicken noodle soup.
Right.
Or in this case, it was soup that was on sale.
So who knows what the price is going to go back to, you know?
Well, that's true.
So one of the other things that scarcity produces is this idea that there are haves and have-nots, right.
So if the idea that you're fearful of missing out or fearful of your kid not loving you isn't enough, there's a whole other cognitive bias of being a have-not, of being left out in the cold, which I guess is a fear of missing out.
But there's also the benefit of being a have where if you're talking about, like a fingerling, which is a 15 toy.
But people were crazy for those things either last year or the year before.
And like just about anybody can afford this $15 toy.
So even if you're like a have not throughout the year, You're down on your luck.
Maybe you're unemployed or you're underemployed.
Things just aren't going your way.
You could still camp out and wait for that late night restocking of fingerlings and get your kid that toy.
That's right.
And for that time, you are a have.
Yeah.
And maybe even somebody with a much higher social status than you, couldn't get that fingerling, which makes it all the more sweet.
And then let's also not forget.
Like we said, this is during the holiday season, so emotions count extra.
So to be a have when you're normally not during the holiday season because you got a must-have toy, is exponentially increased.
Yeah, it's a big deal because it's...
Even if it's just emotionally equal for a brief period of time, it can be a big deal for somebody.
I'd say we take our final break here.
Same here.
And then we come back and talk about the worst people, toy flippers, right after this.
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Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us.
Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths.
Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas.
32 years total law enforcement experience.
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My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about.
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Hey everybody, as is our annual custom, we are raising money for our favorite charity, the cooperative for education, which helps break the cycle of poverty in guatemala by making sure that kids who otherwise wouldn't have an education get to school.
That's right, and here is this year's call to action.
You can join coed for 20 a month to collectively sponsor students in the rise youth development program and if you set up that gift by december 19th, you can have a chance to win a virtual Zoom hangout with Josh and I.
We do it every year and it's a lot of fun.
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You can go to cooperativeforeducation.org slash SYSK, set up your $20 a month sponsorship.
You can also go make a one-time donation if you like, and we may see you for a virtual hangout this January.
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All right, so I set up the worst people are toy flippers.
Obviously, there's a lot of really, really bad people in the world and I'm being somewhat hyperbolic.
But I do think the idea of buying, targeting and buying a lot of must-have toys to sell later for profit on eBay makes you a pretty rotten person.
Yeah.
I'm going to go ahead and lay that judgment down.
Some people do.
I reserve judgment for the ones who do it professionally.
I think if you are a person who is just trying to augment your own holiday expenses and you are foreseeing a lack of supply ahead of time, I say more power to you.
Yeah, I'm not into it.
I feel the same way about ticket scalpers.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the same thing, basically.
Yeah, it's buying up a bunch of things.
Sometimes, and this is completely gross and awful, using bots.
Yeah, that's the pits.
Especially for concert tickets, like when bots buy up all the best concert tickets.
Especially our tickets.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't think anybody uses bots on ours.
Well, probably not.
But actually stuff you should know is we've seen very few bad examples of people trying to overcharge for a sold out show.
More times than not, it's a fellow listener that's like, hey, just come along.
You can sit next to me for face value or I'll even give it to you.
Yeah, that happens quite a bit.
And, yeah, I mean, there's only been a couple where somebody's like, you know, a million dollars.
And, of course, they didn't sell it.
But, yeah, we haven't run into that.
Mostly the problem is from ticket outlets just charging ridiculous fees on top of our ticket price.
Well, that makes us mad.
And you all should know we don't have control over that.
No.
We're the Eddie Vedder of podcasting.
Yeah.
Right.
But if you ever find yourself in a situation where you got shut out of a Stuff You Should Know show and your option is to not go or to pay like a ridiculous amount, just send us an email.
We'll put you on the list.
Oh, God, Chuck.
Wow, you just opened some floodgates.
I mean, there's very few list spots, so it's not like, you know... Right.
Now you just started a must-have toy frenzy for the list.
Look what you've done.
Oh, let's get back to bots.
These bots are so savvy that they can...
They can buy out.
They can have hundreds of credit card numbers on file because sometimes they'll have like a limit to how many things you can buy.
They are, all these shortcuts and ways to bypass all of these safeguards put into effect, including CAPTCHAs.
They will hire foreign workers to sit around and type in the CAPTCHAs to get through security.
Which, I mean, if there is anything that says holiday spirit more than that, I can't think of it.
Yeah.
But these bots can sometimes buy out something in the second that it goes up online for a regular human being to say oh like, all right, they've released the tickets or the doll.
Yeah, gone right, because they they'll.
So what they'll do is they'll go on to like retail websites and figure out what the unique id is for the product that they're looking for.
That's the real art.
It'll start right.
It'll start monitoring that page because people who build these pages will put them out and just won't, you know, kind of really open the curtain for hours ahead of time.
So the bot will have the page targeted and just keep refreshing it hundreds of times a second yeah, until that sale goes live.
And they will have ordered scores of these things, or dozens or hundreds whatever, however many it can, before you can.
Even if you're sitting there refreshing your browser, between the time it takes to refresh your page, They will have wiped the place out using these bots.
And then, if you're truly sophisticated, you probably have another set of bots who take your inventory and then put it up for sale at some exorbitant price on Amazon or eBay or Craigslist or something like that.
Yeah, the worst people.
So, like, you don't even have to do anything.
You just stick your bots on it.
Yeah, I stand by it even for the enterprising person who – I just – I don't know.
I have a big problem with someone making money off of someone else's misfortune to not have been able to get that themselves.
I don't think it makes someone scrappy or enterprising at all.
Hey, man, that's fine.
Yeah, I'll die on this hill.
Okay, that's fine.
So if you are one of those people that Chuck hates and you want to be enterprising, there is an article written by Lisa Smith.
It's on Investopedia, and it's called The Guide to Reselling Toys at Christmas for Extra Money.
Oh, God.
Which is very innocuous.
And there's some tips, actually, that make a lot of sense if you want to do this.
Do you want to go over them, or are you going to remain mute?
You can go over them.
So...
You could talk to parents if you wanted to.
Right, Chuck?
Yeah, that's right, Josh.
Good idea.
Because they know what kids want.
You could talk to kids themselves, which makes sense.
I mean, just go right to the horse's mouth.
I've already said the same thing, Josh.
You can talk to Santa.
I thought this was pretty enterprising.
Like imagine if you are trying – so what you're trying to do here is to identify what toy you want to buy as early ahead of time as possible.
Mm-hmm, so that you can have identified the hot toy of the season and bought them before the demand really struck.
So you talk to mall Santas, hang out in stores.
You can talk to cashiers, stock people all that stuff, because not only will they know what toy you need to look out for, they'll know when these new supplies are coming in.
Maybe slip them a Starbucks card or something like that with $10 on it as a thank you.
But be sure to deduct that from your bottom line.
Sure.
Bribery.
Deduct that bribery.
Right.
And then you can actually hang out in chat rooms.
There's entire websites that are dedicated to this kind of stuff, that are, you know, that say like here's the toys we're looking for.
I spotted some at this, you know, Walmart or whatever.
This stock guy said that Walmart replenishes them on Thursdays at 10.
There's a lot of stuff you can do if you really wanted to put the legwork in.
Great.
Or you could put all that energy into doing something worthwhile.
Right.
I know what you're talking about.
This is the Michael Larson approach to the holidays.
The man who got no whammies on Press Your Luck.
Oh, I had no problem with him.
What?
Okay, this is virtually the same thing.
No, it's not.
It's somebody gaming the system.
Because Michael Larson wasn't.
There wasn't some father who didn't have much money that you know overpaid for a doll to make his little girl happy at Christmastime?
Michael Larson didn't do that.
Right.
He would have, though.
I'm sure of it.
Oh, goodness.
So that's what you can do if you want to flip toys and ruin the holidays.
As far as Chuck's concerned,
That's right.
And that is a big part of the competition of people who will go buy out stocks.
Like you're not really facing them nationwide, unless you're talking about people who release bots onto websites or whatever.
But they are out there and they do actually create competition and help drive that frenzy even further.
Because remember, what's behind must have toys is scarcity marketing, and If there are people out there actively contributing to the scarcity, that's a big deal.
Here's what I want to hear from.
I want to hear from some women listeners who, let's say, you go on a date from a dating app and you sit down across from your date.
And you're like, what do you do?
And he goes, I'm a toy flipper.
And she's like, what's that?
He goes, you know, around Christmas time I go out and I buy like tons of toys that I know little kids really, really want.
And then I mark them up so I can make a lot of money off their parents who may not be able to afford it.
Right.
And just tell me how that date goes from there.
Yeah.
Does it have to be a man and a woman?
Can it just be anybody?
It can be anybody.
But, you know, I think the guy that does this is the guy that I just did that voice for.
Who's apparently from Jersey?
Sure.
They're all from New Jersey.
Okay.
And I love New Jersey.
So I feel like we've learned a lot here.
Yeah.
We've talked about, you know, how a toy becomes a must-have toy of a season.
Usually it has to do with some combination of advertising and buzz marketing as well as scarcity.
The flippers get involved.
I think, and I want to back this up, Chuck, there's not a lot of stuff out there on this.
This all had to be brought together.
This is kind of one of those rare stuff you should know.
Theses about what makes a must-have toy a must-have toy.
But I think it holds up.
Should we talk about some of the big toys of this year?
Sure.
Yes.
So those lists that are out there... This helps me, actually.
We put a bunch of... Well, that's the point.
We're trying to help you and all of the toy flippers out there.
So, actually, this is for all the parents.
This will help you get a drop on the toy flippers, because I guarantee there are very few toy flippers listening to Stuff.
You Should Know.
No, because we have good people in our audience.
So all those lists that are out there now, we kind of compiled and cross-referenced them.
A number of them lists from Target.
Toys, Tots, Pets, and More.
That's just one.
Amazon, The Today Show, Toy Insider, The Spruce Crazy Coupon Lady who had a post about toy flipping, Walmart and New York Magazine.
All of those lists we looked at, and we found ones that appeared on at least a couple, if not more.
And one of them, the first one, appeared on basically every single list that we saw.
Yeah, this one, the bloom doll, B-L-U-M-E, nothing to do with Arrested Development.
But it is, this is something that my daughter might like.
Apparently, this is another thing you add water to and it blooms.
But this is, I don't think it hatches from an egg.
I think this doll just like grows like a chia pet might.
Kind of.
And like their hair that grows is.
I can't tell.
It looks like some sort of foam or styrofoam or something, but it takes different shapes, like pineapples or cakes or something like that.
So cute.
And there's, I think, 22 different versions.
Yeah.
Okay.
Give me 10,000 of them and I'll mark it up.
Yeah.
But they're also, yeah, they're super affordable too.
So they're probably going to be the hot must-have Christmas toy of the year is Bloom Dolls.
Hatchimals are still around?
Yeah.
And there's one that's from How to Train Your Dragon, Toothless Dragon.
Yeah.
The baby dragon.
They have a Hatchimal version of him.
What else?
Surely Barbie's on the list.
Yeah, Barbie has a dream plane.
Whoa.
Which I saw on a couple of lists where, yeah, it's a plane for Barbie.
There's like a snack cart and everything.
Okay.
Comes with a dog that I guess lives on the plane.
Great.
There's also LOL Surprise.
Yeah.
Have you heard of that?
No.
I hadn't heard of it either until we started researching this, but they're like a whole brand.
And a lot of these, including Bloom Dolls and LOL Surprise, they tap into like this whole trend of unboxing.
Do you remember when we talked about unboxing on YouTube where like people open toys?
Yeah, because our good friend Joe Randazzo did his Lego Man unboxing videos.
That were still to me one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Yes.
Great plug, by the way.
But they still do that.
Like they're still unboxing.
It's a huge trend and that's worked its way into toys.
So LOL Surprise is kind of based on that.
And there's like a whole line of dolls.
But they're like into like DJ stuff and fashion and all that.
But they also have Surprise.
And there's also a kid named Ryan's World.
I don't think that's his last name, but that's his YouTube channel.
And guarantee we talked about Ryan's World in that unboxing toys episode.
But he's got all sorts of toys that are out where you just don't know what you're getting when you open the thing.
It's just surprise, unboxing.
Weird subgenre on YouTube of unboxing.
I remember we talked about the one where the lady's hands would just play with things.
Yeah, it was the, yeah.
Remember, she was like, Peppa Pig.
Yeah, it's so interesting.
I'll tell you the one on the list, though, that I like.
I usually look at the toys that I'm like, would I like to play this with my daughter?
Because that's important.
I can't be bored out of my mind, you know.
Oh, yeah, good point.
And this Lego make your own movie kit looks pretty cool to me.
Yeah, I was kind of heartened to see that on a couple of lists, you know, because it's like this is— Little stop-motion movies you can make.
Yeah, it's thoughtful, it's inventive.
I love it.
Yeah, where it's—they have a bunch of different stages and backgrounds and props, including a banana.
It's great.
So you learn how to make—are you going to get her that?
I might.
I think you should.
You want to come over and make a movie?
Yeah.
Anytime, buddy.
All right.
Can we make a flaming hoop out of a coat hanger and do things with that, too?
Sure.
Okay.
And then the other one was the Fisher-Price Linkamals, which are super cute, including the Smooth Move Sloth.
Hey, I'm down with Fisher-Price.
Yeah.
And sloths are huge, huge right now.
Yeah, do you remember Playmobil?
Playmobil.
Playmobil.
Remember they were like the vaguely European kind of action people, but there was nothing like violent or military about them.
They would explore or... I probably recognize them.
I definitely know that name.
You've seen it a million times.
Right, when you see it, I'll look it up and show it to you later, but you'll see it and be like yeah, of course.
Oh, wait.
I see him right there.
Sure.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, I was kind of a Fisher-Price kid, but you know we still have some of that stuff that our daughter plays with, that we had when we were kids, like the barn and the boat.
And, you know, it holds up.
Definitely does hold up.
You got anything else?
Got nothing else.
You going to go buy a bunch of toys and flip them?
I got nothing else except for 20,000 Hatchimals in my garage.
Man, here's the other thing, though, Chuck.
Like, you're taking a risk because you got to predict what the must-have toy is.
And if you guess wrong, you got 20,000 Hatchimals that nobody wants.
Boy, I'd love to see that happen in real life.
I guarantee it happens.
So just keep an ear out.
All right.
If you want to know more about the must-have toys.
There's basically nothing you can't know that we haven't already told you.
So just, I guess, go get your kids some Christmas toys.
That's right.
Is that a good way to sign off?
That's great.
Okay.
Since I said, is this a good way to sign off?
It's time for Listener Mail.
I'm going to call this from a teacher.
We always like to shout out our teachers and their students.
Hey guys, just sending one of what I'm sure is among infinite thank yous that you receive.
As a teacher who regularly references knowledge I gain from listening to your show in my class.
My students unwittingly, and I are eternally grateful for your work.
They give a hearty laugh whenever I steal your character's tuk-tuk, the wise proto-homo sapien, and erg, the folly-prone genetic defect, to elucidate points about the evolution of early humans.
I knew you wouldn't mind my poaching that.
That's what you think, John.
You'll be hearing from our lawyers, John.
You're the toy flipper of teachers.
Just kidding.
The reason I'm writing this is to say I think you should not be discouraged by any listener mail you receive telling you to keep your opinions to yourself.
My favorite episodes are the ones where either or both of you have such strong feelings about the subject that you can't help but go on a rant.
Maybe it's just because I agree with every rant, but I feel like it is important to take a stand on issues that matter to you and admit that you're human beings with a real stake in the game.
Thanks again.
I'll keep listening as long as you keep podcasting.
That is from John Labushkin.
So thank you, Mr. Labushkin, and hello to your students, Mr. Labushkin's class.
Yeah.
Hi, guys.
You've got a cool teacher.
Yeah, he does sound pretty cool.
He's doing God's work teaching the next generation.
That's right.
I hope he doesn't work in a public school because he's going to be like, you can't say God's work.
If you want to get in touch with us, like Mr Labushkin did, or if you're a toy flipper who has an argument against Chuck's argument, we want to hear from you.
Bring it.
You can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and check out our social links.
And you can also send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him.
Gabe Ortiz is a cop.
His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late.
He was the head of this gang.
You gonna push that line for the cause?
Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew.
Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Stephen Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut.
I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product.
With every sip, you get a little something different.
Visit Gentleman's Cut Bourbon dot com or your nearest Total Wines or BevMo.
This message is intended for audiences 21 and older.
Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky.
For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit Gentleman's Cut Bourbon dot com.
Please enjoy responsibly.
Hey everybody, as is our annual custom, we are raising money for our favorite charity, the cooperative for education, which helps break the cycle of poverty in guatemala by making sure that kids who otherwise wouldn't have an education get to school.
That's right, and here is this year's call to action.
You can join coed for 20 a month to collectively sponsor students in the rise youth development program, and if you set up that gift by december 19th, you can have a chance to win a virtual Zoom hangout with Josh and I.
We do it every year and it's a lot of fun.
That's right.
You can go to cooperativeforeducation.org slash S-Y-S-K.
Set up your $20 a month sponsorship.
You can also go make a one-time donation if you like.
And we may see you for a virtual hangout this January.
Thank you for giving.
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