SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: What Makes a Must-Have Christmas Toy?

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0:31What makes a must-have Christmas toy? If you want to know, listen in and find out. Happy holidays, everybody.

0:42Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

0:51Hey, 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 edition. Yeah, we're kicking it off early. Like the rest of the retail world. Do you, 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. But you don't follow me on Twitter, and you should. I'm not on Twitter. Well, that's, 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.

1:35I 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. 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.

2:27and took it as his own and made millions of dollars off of her idea. Yeah. I mean, maybe we'll do a short stuff about that. I wanted to do a full-length episode. But 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's 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.

3:03And 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.

3:52One 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. Sure. 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.

4:47there 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 for my own lifespan, man. 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.

5:33So 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.

6:20Oh, 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. for that empty box of Star Wars, for that Atari Pac-Man cartridge? Did a woman have her leg broken 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?

7:00I 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.

7:39But 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.

8:17Right. Well, that was a big thing. Like, there were some hallmarks to the idea of a must-have toy that were surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids. Violence is one. Right. 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.

9:00There 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. 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.

9:42That 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.

10:19Oh, 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. And it continues on. 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? 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.

11:12so my experience is that it's they're pretty they're good oh yeah yeah so you like your hatchimal yeah are you talking is it like animatronic huh is it animatronic i'm talking about hatchimals yeah it's so okay so i don't know anything about the dish i just my experience is from my niece and i don't remember any dish oh wait this isn't the are we talking about two different things. This is a thing you put in water? 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.

11:51It's a bit like the Tamagotchi, but like an animatronic pet. Oh, I gotcha. 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. 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.

12:26And 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.

13:03That 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. 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 Wishbook is certainly one. Service Merchandise Catalog was another big one for us. Yeah, there's a Montgomery Wards Catalog.

13:45Yeah, of course. And you put this together and you introduced me to a website called Wishbook Web that might as well be called timesuck.com. 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, J.C. Penney, 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 I mean the NFL section alone brought tears to my eyes, and I forgot how much they hyped football back then.

15:00You 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.

15:42So Wishbook Web has kind of preserved how you used to figure out what you wanted for Christmas, which was you go through these wish books 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 a kind of an updated version of that but it still kind of follows the same general contours right where there are lists still 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.

16:20I believe Meyers still does that. I think they're kind of like a Midwestern target. Oh, really? 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.

17:12Yeah, I mean, these, 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? 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.

17:49Because 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? I don't know. 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.

18:29I'm excited for her, actually. Yeah, but I mean, you definitely feel like you're sort of stabbing in the dark as to like, I mean, a parent can go through and look at those lists. But, you know, kill me. Well, a lot of people are excited about that kind of thing. They'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.

19:05They'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. 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.

19:56And 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 the 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.

20:37It's 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.

21:14Yeah, you need to ask dog people and cat people. 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-paying prophecy. Yeah, I mean, I guess any time you look up something on a major retailer website, those first few things are sponsored and they say sponsored in little letters.

21:59Oh, sometimes they don't. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. 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 like with the gift list 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. that, you know, it's a science in a way, and they have found out through science that happy people buy more. You are, not everyone's happy around the holidays, but they definitely, as marketers, play on the idea that you are happier around the holidays, and so you should be in the buying spirit.

22:42Definitely 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. 100 in a three-hour slot. That's a lot of ads. It is. And then, of course, children are on more than one screen these days, so they're also getting ads when they're watching YouTube or whatever, or just on kids' websites. There's ads everywhere. I can't remember what episode So we really kind of dove into that, advertising to children. Oh, man. I think it was about advertising for children.

23:24It must have been. That was the sole 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.

24:09And 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. Right. 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 a parent, some parents, might do to secure that toy.

24:49Yes. 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 and 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 a.m.

25:27waiting 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 Marketing Land.

26:10A guy named Jacob Bodsgar wrote an article on Marketing Land where he cited that and the Disney Vault as really good examples. Yeah, Disney Vault. It's 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.

26:49Yeah, that was a big one. And Bodsgarb makes the 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 this 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.