This post on Albany Craigslist got yanked down, but it stayed on my RSS reader. It was from a few weeks ago, but the situation is getting even more ridiculous as Christmas nears.
“It would be nice to be rich,” my dad mused. “I would buy all of the robot hamsters available and then donate them to Toys For Tots.” They could distribute them…or sell them for a 600% markup as a fundraiser. Either way.
Here’s the Craigslist post:
Obviously not many of you Zhu Zhu highway robbers are parents. Rationalize what you are doing any way you want but it’s flat out wrong. The major thing you are not taking into account is that it’s a CHILDS TOY! These are not concert or sporting event tickets. Yes, I understand the concept of supply and demand but my 6 year old does not. If I can’t afford play-off tickets scalped on-line that’s fine, I can’t complain. But taking advantage of children’s toys is disgusting.
Marking up an $8 item to unaffordable prices in an economy where lots of us parents are not doing well is flat out repulsive. I could have easily bought my child an $8 item from the store but now because of you people I can’t. They were priced that way for a reason. I could give a crap about some electronic hamster but it’s important to kids. An item becomes popular with kids and all the vultures sweep in and this kind of crap ensues. You people are Losers! Get real jobs and stop praying on children!
Don’t lecture us on capitalism you scum sucking high school dropouts! Eat shit and die.
As someone who actually worked at a KB’s toy store during the blackest of black Fridays, the “Tickle Me Elmo” black Friday, I have a great deal of sympathy for this parent and their outrage… to an extent. Yes, the toy scalping is appalling and the people doing it are of the same unethical stock as the wall street types who torpedoed this country’s economy with their greed, making as much profit as they could at everyone else’s expense. And yes, the dedication of the parents who wait year after year in a sleepy mob outside the toy store at 5am just to get their child whatever the “must have” item is for that Christmas is admirable, but shouldn’t we be asking ourselves why is it so utterly life and death that our children get these toys in the first place? The desperation in this parent’s voice makes it sound like their child’s whole world is going to collapse if they don’t get this stupid thing. The scalping only works because demand like this exists. Parents would rather pay $1,500 for an $8 toy than deal with the passing disappointment their child would experience if there isn’t a “Zhu Zhu” under the Christmas tree. We could eliminate the Black Friday “Black Market” entirely if we just raised our children in such a way that their entire realities didn’t hinge on them getting whatever material item the media has told them they have to have to be a real human being that year.