The Year's Hot Toy: Hatchimals

People are going to insane lengths to get their hands on them
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 7, 2016 6:34 PM CST
Tickle Me Elmo Has Nothing on This Year's Hot Toy
This Christmas, Tickle Me Elmo and Furby have nothing on Hatchimals.   (YouTube)

The holiday's hottest toy is so hot it sold 400,000 units in just seven weeks, outpacing the infamous Tickle Me Elmo, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. It's so hot moms in Utah braved 20-degree weather to line up outside a Target at 4:45am just in hopes of getting one, according to the New York Times. It's so hot the Christian Science Monitor reports third-party sellers are asking six times the retail the price of $59.99—and getting it. And it's so hot Toys 'R' Us is chartering its own planes to fly it directly from the manufacturer in China. They're called Hatchimals, and Fox 8 describes them as "cuddly creatures that hatch from eggs and learn to walk and talk."

"By all analyses, we thought we had enough," James Martin, an executive at Hatchimals maker Spin Master, tells the Times. "We had no idea that it would be this big." Experts say the big selling point for kids is the anticipation that builds during the 30 minutes or so it takes to hatch the creature. "Nobody knows why these things happen," one toy expert says. "They're an act of God." Now parents, retailers, and third-party sellers alike are scrambling to get their hands on more Hatchimals before Christmas. But as the Monitor puts it: "If you're...desperate to find one at a reasonable price in time for Christmas, I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry." It recommends giving your kids a Hatchimal IOU instead. (New Zealand "wins Christmas" with nationwide Secret Santa.)

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