An Ohio Target store packed with prospective shoppers.
If you haven’t heard yet, you will soon.
The toy of 2016 is the Hatchimal.
Chalk it up to parenting guilt or consumer anxiety in the wake of current events, but people are spending on Hatchimals, and spending big. At a store price of $50-60, they’re virtually unattainable, and many are paying an average of $200 a toy on the secondhand market.
These bug-like, Furby-ish hybrid animals “hatch” out of eggs, record your child’s voice, and play a set of basic repetitive games. Aside from that, there’s really not much they do.
Kirsty Meyerscough, mother of a seven-year-old, bought her child a Hatchimal. “Thought I would write a review as all I'm seeing is parents desperate to get their hands on one,” she she shared on Facebook.. “So this one is one week old and has been played with for a few hours max. It doesn't talk, it just records the child's voice and plays it back. It has a few games that are boring and once played they don't want to play again. Overall not worth the money."
She’s not alone in her opinions.
“Hatched in 30 minutes and kids were done playing with it in less than an hour,” writes writes Amazon reviewer USC90.. “We spent $49.99, and it’s probably worth about $20.”
Other parents seem to think they’re worth much more. Hatchimals have been advertised and hyped up so excessively that parents have launched mass hysteria to get their hands on these toys- to the point that, on a national level, stores are sold out daily, and long lines of angry shoppers return day after day demanding the next shipment. One mom, Youtube user Dottie L., describes these toys as “Impossible to find. I’ve driven to every store within five hours three times a day for a month now, and I still can’t get one of these stupid toys.”
Some parents, however, are not giving up. They’ve turned to the black market.
The Hatchimals craze has given rise to a purchasing frenzy- and, it turns out, many people buying Hatchimals aren’t even parents.
The hype is so big that many adults are purchasing the $60 toys en masse, and successfully reselling them at rates from $150 to even $300 a piece. These adults- or self-proclaimed entrepreneurs, have successfully rigged the Hatchimals industry into one of the most lucrative investment schemes of 2016. Just look at Ebay.
John Carl, a 26-year-old York County resident who asked his name to be changed for the purposes of this story, said he has made over $2,000 “flipping” Hatchimals since Halloween.
“Parents are mad at people like me, but I got my Hatchimals fair and square,” Carl says. “You might not like it, but if you want one, you’ve got to come through me. There is so much you can buy a kid with $200. If you want to spend $200 on an egg monster, that’s your choice.”
Carl is a retail worker who makes minimum wage at two part-time jobs. He compares his Hatchimal dealing to the stock market. “My Hatchimals were an investment, and I’m not sorry,” he says. “If they’re selling hundred dollar bills for $50, wouldn’t you buy the hundred dollar bills?”
Blogger Mike Zappa, Hatchimal entrepreneur, poses with his stash in November 2016.
Many stores, however, are cracking down on people like Carl who buy Hatchimals en masse, and are setting limits of 1-2 toys per customer. The fact that such measures are even necessary is, “To make sure there are enough toys for everyone,” Target said in a post last week.
Kit Yarrow, consumer psychologist and analyst for CNN Money, weighed in on the craze.
“Everyone agrees that the Hatchimals market will collapse in the near future,” Yarrow says, “There are sellers listing individual Hatchimals for $450, $1,080, $2,500. It will probably keep gaining value till we hit a peak before Christmas. This kind of thing happens every few years around Christmas with some toy.”
“Ask yourself if you really want to succumb to a craze,” she advises. “Which is what this is, a craze. As in people have gone crazy. You don’t want to be one of them. What’s more,” Yarrow continues, “most crazes like the current one over Hatchimals ultimately aren’t really about making kids happy. It’s a craze fueled by competitiveness—parental competition. It’s not about the product, it’s about winning and obsessiveness.”
Or maybe you really, really want that Hatchimal- in which case a number of sellers are eager to help, if only you just chalk up $300 to them on Ebay.
Local Targets and Walmart's await new shipments, struggling daily to meet the demands of every crazed parent and would-be “entrepreneur” of the Christmas season.
Until then? The black market of overpriced Craigslist it is.
