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Subscribe to RSSParents do the darnedest things when it comes to tracking down that toy their kid just has to have for Christmas.
In the early 1980s, moms and dads camped out overnight in store parking lots in hopes of snaring one of those goofy-looking Cabbage Patch dolls. In 2008, an episode of “The Office” aptly captured the phenomenon when Dwight bought up all the Princess Unicorn dolls around Scranton and sold them at an enormous profit to desperate parents.
Our TODAY Moms/Parenting.com online survey of 6,000 moms found that 4 percent say they'll do whatever it takes to get that must-have holiday gift, whether paying a premium for it, driving all around town to find it, or even wrestling it away from someone else in the toy aisle!
Read the full results of our 'Spoiled by the Holidays' survey
Related: Expert advice on raising grateful kids
Related: Parents share their kids' worst spoiled-brat moments
Krissy Lawton, of Haughton, La., can’t even remember what toy her daughter wanted so badly for Christmas 2009. She only knows she couldn’t find it anywhere and decided she wasn’t going to get caught shorthanded last Christmas.
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“Last year, I’m like forget this,” says Lawton, 32, mother of Molly, 5, and Campbell, who’ll be 2 in February. “I’m going to Google what’s going to be the hottest toy and buy all the ones I can.”
That, according to her research, would be the “Sing-a-ma-jigs,” cute, plush Teletubbie-esque toys that sing and emit other sounds when their tummies are pressed.
December 2010, several weeks after she snared five or six Sing-a-ma-jigs — gotta think of the nieces, too — at her local Target, Time magazine named them the top toy of the year. But by then, Lawton says, “every store everywhere had bins and bins” of them.
After last year’s wasted effort, Lawton didn’t bother investigating this year’s hot toys. So when Molly started asking for a pink Fijit, Teletubbie-esque toys that talk when you squeeze them (do you detect a theme here?), Lawton thought, “no problem.” Besides, “her wish list changes every five minutes.”
Still, Molly kept talking about that pink Fijit, so after Lawton tucked her kids into bed on Thanksgiving, she made a late-night run to Walmart. You guessed it: After fighting through hordes of shoppers, Lawton found that the Fijits shelf was bare. That weekend, she checked another Walmart and Target. Ditto. Sure, she could have bought one on Amazon or eBay for $30 more than the suggested retail price of $50, but, she says, “I don’t think she’s going to play with it very long. That’s why I wasn’t going to pay the big bucks.”
She started bracing Molly for disappointment. “I heard from Jay, the Elf on the Shelf (interestingly, another toy that, like Cabbage Patch dolls, kids can “adopt”), that Santa’s elves didn’t make enough Fijits this year,” Lawton told her kindergartener.
Still, she kept trying. She checked ToysRUs and Toy Fair, a local store. No luck. She did find Sage, the green Fijit, at Kmart. Lawton figured a green Fijit was better than no Fijit, so she bought it. Then Lawton started playing with Sage and reading Fijit reviews. “Apparently, nobody likes the green one. It goes into this weird alien voice.”
So she nearly dropped her son when, on a trip to Books-a-Million, she spied two pink Serafina Fijits as well as a purple Willa and one Sage. She snapped up the Serafinas and the Willa and plans to return Sage to Kmart.
As for baby brother Campbell’s wish list? “All he asked Santa for was a train and a truck,” Lawton says. “He’s very inexpensive.”
Rita Rubin, a contributing writer for msnbc.com and today.com, once bought a Cabbage Patch Kid the week before Christmas, and survived. She lives in suburban Washington, D.C., with her husband and two daughters.
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i totally do that!! i start my shopping in october, when the hot toys list comes out, and then i finish around thanksgiving. that way i have a month to pick up specials and sales and anything else i may have forgotten.
We watch Sprout and PBS in my house. My kids (5 and 20 mos) don't know or care what the hottest toy is because there are no commercials.
I never was one for hot toy fads.
Gee and people wonder why today's kids are such self-centered, spoiled brats?! Could it be because of this....? It's all about "me me me" "I want, I want, I want", "every kid in school has this so I must have it too" "buy me this, and this, and this, and anything else you buy me is crap", but it seems a lot of parents play right into it.
This is why, at age 21, with not even a boyfriend in sight, I have decided two things. Okay, it's not entirely the whole reason of course, but part of it!!!!! No-or very little-tv, and no commercial TV until they are at LEAST 8-10 years old, AND, they are going to be homeschooled until grade 6 or 7 (my career as a private/MYC music teacher permits this).
What I loved most about Christmas was that my mom was always able to find the most appropriate things for me...things that usually weren't even on my list, such as a CD that I didn't know exist, or a book she knew I would like, or the perfect sweater. This will be my second Christmas without her, and I am going to be honest enough to admit that I will still miss that surprise of finding out that my mom knew me better then I knew myself. Things were never extravagent for Christmas, but it was always joyful. I can't remember a disappointing Christmas at all. Many of the things that I received are still well loved today, either as carefully saved toys, sweaters that eventually had to be donated because I grew too tall, or cds and books that I still listen to/read and love. I ALWAYS appreciated the gift of a calender!!!!
Should I have kids, I want to be like my mom was for me-finding things that are perfect but not because they were on the list.
As a child, it was an incredibly rare occasion to get candy. I knew that that didn't happen, so I didn't ask. Toy aisles? Nope, never put up a fuss, again, it was not going to happen. Once-maybe once a year, or less then that, we would get to chose something that we had saved for-in my case, it was usually something of the Kelly (barbie's baby sister-I loved creating a preschool/daycare centre for them!) persuasion, either a new doll or a bit of equipment. We didn't have video games, or computer games. Computers were for word processing, period.
As a four or five year old, I remember cringing to see a child making a fuss and thought to myself "My goodness, they are spoiled!!!!". I've been told that I'm mature, and was mature then, but I know it is because of the good things my parents did. Not to say I believed in everything they did, but because so much they did do was what I want to do for my own children, should I have any some day.