Archived X-Mas Toy Flipping 2016 is in full swing - Hatchimals

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I was in toys and just about every guest before 9 am were cheerfulling asking if we got any hatchimals. They said they knew the truck days so I just told and showed them that it's out of stock, 0 on the way, and was last sold on 'x' date in the early morning hours. Also that other targets in the area are out of stock and some say one on hand, but that's really unlikely. It's a high demand toy, this is how it is
 
Our STL decided we are not holding hatchimals and CAH for guest. One of our electronic TMs started arguing with him, grow a spine.
 
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You cannot make this stuff up.

We got 6 Hatchimals on our truck Friday night. Four on the shelf, two on the end cap. At 6:55AM, I am outside the front of the store adjusting a flu shot banner. There are 8 female guests waiting in line at the softlines entrance, and 1 gentleman waiting at our grocery entrance. This is the same gentleman from the OP (although I did not realize it at the time). I head toward the grocery entrance to get back inside. TL decides to keep the door open and let the guy walk in the store. The guy literally sprints down the aisle by grocery toward the back of the store. I wanted to holler out "no running", but he wouldn't have heard me. My TL asked if I would follow him into toys and explain the 1/per person limit while he went to unlock the other door. In the amount of time it took for the second door to be unlocked the gentleman guest apparently darted through the middle of the store and began checking out with four Hatchimals at a self service check out (I didn't witness this) as I was still headed toward toys to deal with the cat fight that was about to ensue - nine guests who I presumed all would be fighting over 6 toys. I got back to toys about the same time as the 8 frantic women and all six Hatchimals were gone. GONE! We had not even been open for 120 seconds and one guest cleared us out. He stayed under the radar by using self serve check out. However, he only bought 4, and there were 6 on the shelf. WTF? Did other team members take them, or did he hide them?

The 8 female guests were furious and demanded the GSTL. The 8 women were all offered $5 store credit for the inconvenience.

Fast forward and hour, I see the guy come back in the store and radio my TL. The guest goes into home section and pulls the other two Hatchimals out from underneath bed pillows!! The TL confronted the guest and asked him to leave the store, without the Hatchimals. The Hatchimals lasted about 30 minutes before they were bought.

The TL had every intention of halting the original sale if the guest wanted more than one. However, nobody expected him to get the toys and check out so quickly. Nobody was even close to the self serve check out he used. Super poor ops mgmt.

The lengths people go to to get these things is fascinating. I found the entire ordeal kind of amusing....
 
I got one ☺️. Someone sent it to backstock because "lul" flow doesn't know what their doing. I hand it to the Electronic TM who is shocked we have one and he puts it on the shelf. I take my lunch and a hour later it's still there so I ask him if I can buy it and he says sure.
 
@ranger1821 that guy is probably making a killing on eBay, especially with those ones he bought in October before we really noticed this was going to become a thing.

We have 6 total on the way with an ETA of Thursday. I'm willing to bet that SFS orders for all of them will drop in between the time the truck is acknowledged and when I clock in 30 minutes later.
 
I was going to be a dick the previous year when those Elsa dolls were the hot thing but I decided not to buy them all. My gf and I were toy hunting in September because by the time we want something there always sold out like the Pie Face game last year.
 
How do you ship from store, itll probable be my only chance to get one if I can figure it out.Target.com says you have to come to the store to buy them, no ordering...does that mean you cant ship from store and order sfs? how else am i gonna get one?
 
I think someone is going to physically harm me bc of these damn things. Already getting hostile phone calls from guests over them. They think we should be getting pallets of them on our trucks. LOL. We get five.
 
buteeinnm said:
How do you ship from store, itll probable be my only chance to get one if I can figure it out.Target.com says you have to come to the store to buy them, no ordering...does that mean you cant ship from store and order sfs? how else am i gonna get one?
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You just look for it to be available on Target.com. SFS is invisible to the guest and there is no special option to do it.
 
A Hatchimal somehow made it as a return today, so I heard. Guest service let the LOD know, who in turn let Electronics TM know. But Guest service told the LOD on channel 1, so most of the TMs (and shoppers near those TMS) heard. LOD told the Electronics TM on 4, but because the announcement was on 1, I gathered later on that most of the store was actually on 4 with LOD and said TM (during which we all missed a callbox for toys, gee I wonder what the guest wanted) waiting with baited breath to see what happened.

TM goes to get the toy, comes back to electronics, there is, in what he later described
to me as "a small mob".

AP had to come over to oversee the situation, there were 7 frantic guests and 1 toy. There was no line so there was no way to just say "first come first serve". AP bullshitted and said we needed to "process" and to come back in a half hour. Hoping they'd leave, so he could give it to the first guest who came back.

But people were willing to stay the full half hour.

AP brings it to LOD, and after discussion, they decide that outside of running an impromptu auction house (not very brand friendly), they simply can't sell it to be fair to guests. LOD decided to tell the guests it had already been hatched prior to return, so it couldn't be sold. All guests are given a 10 apology coupon, everyone is pissed.

Hatchimal will be put out tomorrow for first guest to nab it.

Christ what a shit show. Kinda glad I was building bikes today and missed it. Though everyone was following along on the "private" channels, outside the AP channel, 6.

Also, our guest service TM is a bonehead.
 
RTCry said:
Well, thanks for nothing Hatchimals.

Accordingly, a statement on the product site acknowledged the mad rush for toys, assuring customers it had “increased production and a whole new batch of Hatchimals will be ready to hatch in early 2017.”

Good luck finding Hatchimals, among this season’s hottest toys
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Ladies and Gentleman, Christmas is going to be delayed until January 25th because Hatchimals aren't f'ing ready for delivery until early 2017.
 
Let me get this straight.....
We have enough foresight to know this is going to be such a hot product that we want it on the cover of the toy book. As did Walmart. As did TRU.
Those toy books and "Kid's Choice" or Hot Toys Lists are developed in conjunction with supply chain and vendors, such as Spin Master, the maker of Hatchimals. I would not doubt it if the toy companies pay for premium spots in the holiday catalogs (but I admit I have no idea how these vendor relationships work).

At what point did we, or Walmart, or TRU ask the question, " If you want this product on the cover of our toy book, will we have enough supply to keep up with demand?" Seems like a fairly reasonable question. It does not seem reasonable for stores to only get only a few deliveries of this toy leading up to Black Friday if this is going to be our darling toy of the year. We have had three deliveries that I am aware of. An initial stock of 12 toys, a second stock of 12 toys and we got 6 more over the weekend. Thats it. And I know a lot of stores that have received way less than what we've gotten. We have none on the way and from the rumors I've heard, we will likely not get another delivery before black friday. If you believe the reports, Target is supposed to receive a dump from Spin Master the last week of November, which would start showing up in stores the first of second week in December. After that, there are no more until 2017.

But then again, maybe the scarcity of the toy makes it the darling toy.....I suppose if we all had 30 sitting on our shelves, it would't be so popular??
 
RTCry said:
I think someone is going to physically harm me bc of these damn things. Already getting hostile phone calls from guests over them. They think we should be getting pallets of them on our trucks. LOL. We get five.
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That seems to be more than most....
 
The new Electronics TM put one on hold today without knowing we weren't putting it on hold. The guest is out of town and isn't getting it until tomorrow. Which means Target.com is going to show we still have them tomorrow, even though we sold the other 5 right after that one was put on hold. He's closing tomorrow and I'm tempted to transfer every call about them to him. I won't. But I want to.

The operator before I came in kept track and had 41 calls before 2:30 about it; I didn't keep track but it was the only calls I got all night.
 
ranger1821 said:
But then again, maybe the scarcity of the toy makes it the darling toy.....I suppose if we all had 30 sitting on our shelves, it would't be so popular??
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That's exactly what's happening. Remember Pie Face? We were barely getting any inventory last year and people were just as obsessed with it as they are with the Hatchimals. We didn't start getting regular stock until February. Now we are selling several cases per day and have plenty of inventory on hand.
 
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