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

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know

Episode Title: SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: What Makes a Must-Have Christmas Toy?
Date: December 12, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts – Stuff You Should Know

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Episode Overview

This festive episode kicks off SYSK’s "12 Days of Christmas… Toys" playlist. Josh and Chuck dive deep into the concept of the “must-have” Christmas toy phenomenon. They explore its origins, what transforms a regular toy into an extreme holiday craze, the evolution from catalog wish lists to online hot lists, the market dynamics behind toy scarcity, and the sometimes contentious world of toy "flippers" who resell in-demand items. Mixing nostalgia, social commentary, and humor, the hosts unpack how advertising, scarcity, marketing, and cultural shifts fuel the annual hunt for the hottest holiday toy.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins of the "Must-Have" Christmas Toy (03:07–09:45)

• Cabbage Patch Kids: The First "Must-Have?"

  • Josh argues Cabbage Patch Kids in 1983 were the first must-have Christmas toy, drawing a comparison to how Jaws created the summer blockbuster (05:00).
  • Chuck debates whether Star Wars toys (1977) or Atari Pac-Man (1982) may really count as earlier examples (07:16).
  • The Cabbage Patch craze involved intense consumer behavior, including violence and store managers arming themselves with bats (08:40).

  Quote:
  Josh Clark (08:40):
  “Did a woman have her leg broken because a crowd trying to get their hands on those things turned violent?... Did a department store manager in Charleston, West Virginia, have to arm himself with a baseball bat to defend himself from his very customers?”

• Toy Scarcity, Violence, and Social Change

  • The podcast draws links between an inability to meet holiday demand and the public’s unhinged reactions, establishing that not just popularity, but viral scarcity/inaccessibility, makes a toy “must-have.”

2. Hallmarks of Must-Have Toys & Notorious Christmas Crazes (09:45–14:51)

• The Recipe: Buzz, Scarcity & Media Manipulation

  • Media, supply limits, and deliberate hype heighten demand.
  • Coleco, for example, sent Cabbage Patch Kids directly to reporters (10:42).
  • The tradition continued with Nintendo consoles in the late '80s, Tickle Me Elmo (including violence and trampling), and more recent trends like Hatchimals (12:30–13:59).

• Hatchimals & Tamagotchis: Confused Toys

  • The hosts clarify Hatchimals vs. other water-toys, with Chuck humorously criticizing "garbage" after-hatch toys (13:14).

  Quote:
  Chuck Bryant (13:14):
  “You have to leave it there and leave it there and then it hatches into a garbage toy.”

3. How Kids and Parents Used (and Use) Holiday Toy Catalogs (17:52–23:00)

• Nostalgia for Catalog Days

  • Discussing Sears Wish Books, Service Merchandise, JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, etc., the hosts highlight how wish lists and dog-eared catalogs supported family rituals of gift-choosing (18:09–19:59).
  • The website "Wishbook Web" digitally preserves this experience (19:01).

  Quote:
  Chuck Bryant (19:09):
  “If you go through and spend a few minutes clicking through these things and the years where you were like 6 to 12, waves of nostalgia wash over you... I almost did nothing else today.”

• Transition to Modernity

  • Today’s equivalents are online lists on retailer sites—Amazon, Walmart, Target—or trusted aggregators like The Spruce, Toy Insider, Toys Tots Pets and More (21:40–23:00).
  • The hosts discuss how modern parents navigate these lists, expressing some skepticism about their usefulness and authenticity (22:55).

4. The Business Behind Toy "Hot Lists" (23:00–27:00)

• Retailers’ Pay-to-Play Lists vs. Third Parties

  • Amazon and Walmart charge toy makers to nominate products for their “hot toy” lists, sometimes millions for consideration or placement (24:18–24:55).
  • Target remains more opaque about their process (25:36).

• The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Hot Lists

  • Being on a retailer’s or media outlet’s hot list can itself create demand, fulfilling the prophecy of the toy’s “must-have” status (26:33).

  Quote:
  Josh Clark (26:33):
  “Just the very fact that those things are on their lists is going to make them among the hot toys of the season. So it's like a self-fulfilling or self-paying prophecy.”

5. Psychology and Science of Holiday Toy Marketing (27:00–31:57)

• Marketing Strategies: Joy, Nostalgia, & Scarcity

  • Marketers capitalize on consumers’ heightened emotional state during the holidays. Ads are everywhere—children may see 100+ toy ads in a three-hour block (27:44–28:07).
  • Scarcity is a prime motivator; if toys are hard to find, the shopping frenzy escalates (29:04–29:34).

• Fear of Missing Out: The True Engine

  • The sense of urgency, exacerbated by feelings of potential social embarrassment or failing one’s child, is the real driver behind these crazes (30:46).

  Quote:
  Chuck Bryant (29:34):
  “People are motivated by fear... It is frightening what a parent, some parents might do to secure that toy.”

6. Scarcity as Manipulation: Real and Manufactured (31:57–35:31)

• Scarcity Tactics
  • Marketers sometimes feign or exaggerate scarcity to drive demand—e.g., Disney vaults, Pappy Van Winkle whiskey, limited-release burgers (31:03 & 33:39).
  • Discussion of Hatchimals and Fingerlings and how companies either failed to ramp up production or, some suspect, intentionally held back supply to inflate demand (32:11–33:39).
  • Even a simple “limit 12 per customer” sign at the supermarket can trigger irrational buying (34:09).

7. Social Dynamics of Holiday “Haves” and “Have-nots” (35:31–36:11)

• Emotional Stakes

  • Achieving “have” status, even briefly, can feel especially sweet or significant for parents or families who aren’t usually first in line for material goods.

  Quote:
  Josh Clark (35:31):
  “For that time, you are a have. And maybe even somebody with a much higher social status than you couldn't get that fingerling, which makes it all the more sweet.”

8. The Dark Side: Toy Flippers and Bots (39:09–47:23)

• Toy Flippers: Opportunists or Holiday Villains?

  • Chuck rails against toy flippers—people who buy up hot toys to resell at a profit, comparing them to ticket scalpers and calling them “the worst people” (39:09).
  • Josh is slightly more forgiving toward non-professional flippers just trying to make some extra cash, drawing a distinction from organized/resale bot operations (39:34).
  • Bots are described as a major problem, using technology to buy out stock instantly and resell items—often bypassing retailer-imposed limits and captchas by hiring teams to defeat security (41:32–42:22).

• How to Become a Flipper—(Tongue-in-Cheek)

  • Tips include talking to kids, Santas, store employees, lurking in online forums, and even bribery with coffee cards—a satirical detour (44:09–45:32).

  Quote:
  Chuck Bryant (39:09):
  “The idea of buying, targeting and buying a lot of must have toys to sell later for profit on ebay makes you a pretty rotten person. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and lay that judgment down.”

  Memorable Exchange:
  Chuck (47:18):
  “Let's say you go on a date from a dating app and you sit down across from your date and you’re like, what do you do? And he goes, ‘I'm a toy flipper.’ ...And just tell me how that date goes from there.”

9. What It Takes to Become a “Must-Have Toy” (47:37–48:10)

• Josh’s Thesis

  • The recipe: A confluence of advertising and buzz marketing, deliberate or de facto scarcity, and the feedback loop of hype. Once it’s coalesced, flippers (and sometimes violence) follow.

  Quote:
  Josh Clark (47:37):
  “Usually it has to do with some combination of advertising and buzz marketing as well as scarcity. The flippers get involved, I think...and help drive that frenzy even further.”

10. This Year’s Must-Have Toys (48:14–53:32)

• Hot Toys of 2025—Cross-Platform Consensus

  • Based on lists from Target, Amazon, Toy Insider, Walmart, and more, standout toys include:
    • Blume Dolls: Water-activated, “growing” dolls with surprise features (49:09–49:40).
    • Hatchimals (including “Toothless” dragons from How to Train Your Dragon) (49:57).
    • Barbie Dream Plane: Complete with dog and snack cart (50:10–50:20).
    • LOL Surprise: Dolls centered on unboxing, fashion, DJ themes (50:23).
    • Ryan’s World: Toys from the YouTuber Ryan, also focused on unboxing experience (51:34).
    • Lego Make-Your-Own Movie Kit: Stop-motion movie kit (52:01–52:14).
    • Fisher-Price Linkimoles: Cute animatronic toys, notably a “smooth move sloth” (52:37).
    • Playmobil: Enduring European-inspired non-military action figures (52:52).

  Quote:
  Chuck Bryant (49:40):
  “There’s, I think, 22 different versions... Give me 10,000 of them! That’ll lock it up.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Holiday Shopping Frenzy
  Josh Clark (08:40):
  “Did a woman have her leg broken because a crowd trying to get their hands on those things turned violent?... Did a department store manager in Charleston, West Virginia, have to arm himself with a baseball bat...?”

• On Toy Flippers
  Chuck Bryant (39:09):
  “...buying, targeting and buying a lot of must have toys to sell later for profit on eBay makes you a pretty rotten person.”

• On Retailer Hot Lists
  Josh Clark (26:33):
  “It’s like a self-fulfilling or self-paying prophecy.”

• On Toy Unboxing Trends
  Josh Clark (50:23):
  “...they tap into like this whole trend of unboxing...it’s a huge trend and that’s worked its way into toys. So LOL Surprise is kind of based [on that].”

• On Bot Technology
  Josh Clark (41:32):
  “They will have ordered scores of these things or dozens or hundreds, whatever, however many it can, before you can. Even if you're sitting there refreshing your browser... they will have wiped the place out using these bots.”

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 03:07–09:45: History/Rebuttal: What was truly the first must-have Christmas toy?
• 10:42: Media and intentional buzz creation around Cabbage Patch Kids.
• 12:27: Extreme consumer violence over Tickle Me Elmo and modern "must-have" toys.
• 17:52–23:00: Toy catalogs, Wishbook Web, and nostalgia’s hold on holiday shopping.
• 24:18–26:54: The business of retailer hot lists and pay-for-placement schemes.
• 27:44–31:57: The psychology and manipulation of holiday marketing.
• 39:09–47:23: Toy flippers, bots, and the ethics of toy resale.
• 48:14–53:32: “Hot toys” for 2025—what’s trending on all the major lists.

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Tone and Style

The episode is full of warm nostalgia, tongue-in-cheek humor, and a touch of holiday cynicism. Josh and Chuck balance childhood wonder with adult skepticism about modern marketing tactics and supply manipulation. Debates are friendly and humorous, peppered with personal anecdotes.

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Summary & Takeaways

• The “must-have Christmas toy” is a relatively modern invention fueled by media, engineered scarcity, and emotional marketing.
• The ecosystem involves not just manufacturers and retailers but media amplifiers, parental wish fulfillment, opportunistic flippers, and even aggressive resellers.
• The evolution from catalog dog-earing to online buzz reflects larger retail and cultural shifts—but the basic dynamic of hype, scarcity, and frenzy remains.
• Being on a retailer’s hot list is often as powerful as actual consumer interest, creating a feedback loop.
• Scarcity, whether genuine or engineered, is what transforms a popular toy into a “craze.”
• Nastier side effects (violence, flippers, bots) are byproducts of these marketing machinations.
• This year’s “must-haves” carry on the tradition, adapting to the age of surprise and unboxing.
• The emotional stakes—for kids and parents—remain high, and the desire to be a "have" is as potent as ever.
• The episode closes with a list of the year’s most in-demand toys, anticipation for future holiday chaos, and a little more ribbing about (and for) toy flippers and marketers.

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For listeners who missed it, this episode offers not just a guide to the current "it" toys, but a thorough exploration of what drives the phenomenon—making sense of the chaos behind those Christmas morning smiles (or disappointed tears).

Transcript

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[Chuck Bryant]

Happy holidays everybody. This is Chuck here with one of our episodes for our Stuff youf should know 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist. Now we decided to put this together. Thought it'd be a fun little holiday idea to kind of Gather up some of our toy centric episodes and release them this December, all packaged up. So here we are with. I think this is the first one. Either the first or the second one on the list. And the episode title is what makes a must have Christmas Toy. If you want to know, listen in and find out.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Happy holidays, everybody. Welcome to stuff youf should know, a.

[Josh Clark]

Production of iheartradio's how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Early Christmas Edish.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we're kicking it off early like.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

The rest of the retail world.

[Josh Clark]

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. Yeah, but you don't follow me on Twitter. And you should.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm not on Twitter.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that's. I'm saying you should get on Twitter to follow me.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, thank you.

[Josh Clark]

But at 7:30 in the morning on November 1st, the. The day after Halloween, I tweeted Merry Christmas and got a lot of hate back for it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

What do you do on Twitter? Do you just poke people like that?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, pretty much just troll.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Well, that was my plug for Twitter. Oh, yeah, yeah, Here we go. So let's see. Back in 1983, Chuck, you were 12. Okay, I was seven. You didn't have a Cabbage Patch Kid, did you?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, there's a story there, if you really want to know.

[Josh Clark]

I think you've told it before, but let's have it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, we bought my sister one of the very first little people is what they were called before they were Cabbage Patch Kids.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

In Helen, Georgia, when they were handmade by Xavier Roberts, who I recently learned stole that idea from a woman and took it as his own and made millions of dollars off of her idea. Yeah, I mean, I wanted to. Maybe we'll do a short stuff about that. I wanted to do a full length episode.

[Josh Clark]

But we, I mean, 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we had. She got this doll. Its name was Chuck, which was kind of funny. Cause that's my name.

[Josh Clark]

That's so funny.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Does she still have it?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Uh huh.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's great.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And we'll finish with Cabbage Patch Kids and then I'll take issue with you. So go ahead.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. I know what you're gonna take issue with.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I don't know if you do know, but go ahead.

[Josh Clark]

So let me start.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

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 Christmas time. 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

One of the great, great marketing gems of all time.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. 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. 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. There 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I don't think it was. 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.

[Josh Clark]

What was the first?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm just speaking from my own lifespan and I definitely think Star wars counts because if you can sell an empty box to a kid for Christmas, then that's 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 gonna be a big thing. So 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.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

They sold like 40 million of these.

[Josh Clark]

No, 40 million boxes.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm trying to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. 40 million Star wars toys.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Inside of a year.

[Josh Clark]

So. Okay, yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And did you know that you can even buy these empty box kits on ebay now?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, I'm sure I saw one.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Listed for 1,500 bucks.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not at all surprised.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, boy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That was in 1982.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That sold 7 million cartridges.

[Josh Clark]

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, ok. 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 are trying to get to the Star wars empty box or the Atari cartridge? I would guess that the answer is no.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I think human behaviors have changed over the years. I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

From 1982 to 1983.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I guarantee I could find one violent incident about the Atari cartridge.

[Josh Clark]

I'll bet you couldn't.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, you know, there wasn't then, because there was. They. They met the demand.

[Josh Clark]

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. Cabbage Patch Kids, if not, were the first, which they were.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Did you have one?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. Webber Dino.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You had a Cabbage patch Kid.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I ended up taking his head off and giving him a mohawk as.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I grew older, because not to be too, like, gender binary here, but I didn't know a lot of boys that wanted the cabbage patch kid.

[Josh Clark]

What? I've always broken the mold, Chuck.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, sure. No, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. I grew up with William wants a dollar 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. As far as I knew, everybody wanted a cabbage patch Kid.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, we'll just put this one to bed.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Like a Cabbage Patch Kid with a.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Mohawk that you adopted.

[Josh Clark]

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

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

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. Very first time in 1983 with Cabbage Patch Kids. There were Nintendo's 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. That first game console, huge. 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.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know, man. N64 was pretty great with GoldenEye.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, God, N64 was great.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That game blew my mind.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was great. Especially the Battle Royale where you could play your friends. Oh, man, that was fun.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We called it Hunt and Chase.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I used to get so mad.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

In those. Like, 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, you know, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Yeah, that was always a bummer. What about Tickle Me Elmo? That was a big one. Thanks to Rosie o'. Donnell.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I was a little old for that.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I was in my mid-20s.

[Josh Clark]

I had one.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, well, you were in late high school.

[Josh Clark]

Not really. 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, a broken rib, a concussion, and it continues on, like, 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?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

So my experience is that they're pretty. They're good.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah. So you like your hatchimal?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Are you talking. Is it like animatronic? Huh? Is it animatronic?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm talking about hatchimals. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wait, this isn't the. Are we talking about two different things? This is the thing you put in water.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no water. You'll electrocute yourself when you touch it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay, maybe I'm thinking of something else.

[Josh Clark]

This is like an animatronic thing that hatches from an egg, but like, you have to like teach it and train it and raise it and like give it attention and everything. It's a bit like the Tamagotchi, but like an animatronic pet.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I got you 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, no, that's, that's not this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

Hatchimals are much different. Okay, so. 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 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 and 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?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, let's take a break and we'll get to the bottom of it right after.

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Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers, growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisors Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures tired.

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Of juggling sales tools or spending hours on prospecting just to book a few meetings? Meet Apollo, the go to Market platform for finding leads, connecting with buyers and closing deals all in one place. Apollo gives you access to over 210 million contacts and AI that handles all your busy work finding leads, drafting emails, and even prioritizing your day. So stop paying for five different sales tools when one does it all. Visit Apollo I.O. and sign up free today.

[Josh Clark]

Hey everybody, we're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026, and eventually Canada will tell you your dates too.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right, we're going to do at least three legs. And the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th. And then finally back at Sketchfest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. And then April 16th, 17th and 18th, we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry, you can get all the info you need and buy [e-mail], click on the tour button and thank us later.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[Josh Clark]

That was quite a setup, huh?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I think so.

[Josh Clark]

So back in the day when you were shopping for Christmas, if you were a kid or a parent, it didn't matter. 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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 Seer's Wish book is certainly one. Yeah, Service Merchandise catalog was another big one for us.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, there's a Montgomery Wards catalog.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, of course. And you put this together and you introduced me to a website called Wishbook Web that might as well be called timesuck dot com.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's pretty great, isn't it?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Because someone has gone through and scanned. Is it just Sears wishbooks?

[Josh Clark]

No, no, it's Sears, JCPenney and Montgomery Ward. And then I think there's the occasional what store is that here or there.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right. They have scanned these entire wish books up to 1996, which everyone knows is.

[Josh Clark]

The cutoff date for nostalgia.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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 remember the. I mean the NFL section alone brought tears to my eyes. And I forgot how much they hyped football back then.

[Josh Clark]

You just can't stop crying.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It was crazy. The clothes, the alarm clocks, the clock radios, the tech section, it was just. It was off the charts for me looking through this. I almost did nothing else today.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And just to get laughs by like seeing the 24 year olds posing in bathrobes, it's really, really funny.

[Josh Clark]

Right. One of them's got like a pipe that blows balls.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh my God, this is just amazing. What a great website.

[Josh Clark]

So Wishbook Web has kind of preserved how you used to figure out what you wanted for Christmas, which was you go through these wishbooks or these catalogs or whatever. And then you'd tell your parents, you 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. I believe Myers still does that. I think they're kind of like a Midwestern Target.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they have a toy catalog that they put out still, I believe to this year.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, now you get the Restoration Hardware Christmas catalog.

[Josh Clark]

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, or objective than others when saying like these are the must have toys.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, 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 then 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.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. Maybe instead of like dog earing the pages, you send your parents links.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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 because I could hand my 4 year old a catalog and say pick out some stuff, it'd be great. But I'm not gonna say, hey, just log on to the Spruce and go scroll down until you find something you like.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Stay out of their parents section. I mean, what do you do? You literally have a kid, Chuck, what do you do?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. I mean, we just buy things that we think she might like.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I guess so.

[Josh Clark]

That's great. I'm excited for her actually.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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. They're basically saying, these are what experts are saying, you know, your kid is going to want. If you go buy this, you will score a home run with your kid.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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 bucks as a retailer to be on their top list or whatever.

[Josh Clark]

So, okay, yes. And what I saw though was that they, you spend that money to nominate them, to nominate your toy for their consideration, to include on the list just for a 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. And then I guess I don't know how they curate it. They actually kind of keep a close 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Walmart, they charge ten grand a month per toy to be on their Buyer's picks toy list. And like you point out here, they, Walmart starts their list in August and you've got to wonder, is that because they're making 10 grand a pop off of the stuff per month?

[Josh Clark]

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. 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 MacKenzie, basically.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, bully Bullseye.

[Josh Clark]

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, naughty and nice. Yeah, you need to ask dog people and cat people. That's right. 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 lists is going to make them among the hot toys of the season. So it's like a self fulfilling or self paying prophecy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I guess anytime you look up something on a major retailer website, those first few things are sponsored. And they say sponsored in little letters.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, sometimes they don't.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh really? 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And I think like with the gift lists 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, let's talk a bit about marketing in general around the holidays. It's a science in a way and they have found out through science that happy people buy more. 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. Definitely 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.

[Josh Clark]

100. 100 in a three hour slot.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's a lot of ads.

[Josh Clark]

It is. And then of course, you know, children are on more than one screen these days. So they're also getting ads on, you know, when they're watching YouTube or whatever or just on kids websites, there's ads everywhere. I can't remember what episode we really kind of dove into that advertising to children.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh man. I think it was about advertising for children. Like that was the sole goal.

[Josh Clark]

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, our brand or our product to that holiday, 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 Christmas time. That's really basic stuff. I mean like that's everywhere. You can't get away from that in the holiday season. And there's not even necessarily anything wrong with it. It's just, that's just basic marketing and advertising 101 when it comes to holiday advertising.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the other thing we mentioned earlier in terms of marketing, and this is also marketing 101 is about scarcity. If you have a toy that there is a limited amount of, that is when you're gonna 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. 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. 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 4am waiting for, you know, a 24 hour retailer to restock their, their supply of this so you can buy it. That's unusual behavior. And the reason why it all comes down to scarcity marketing and 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it's not, you know, just toys. You've seen everything from. You make a great point about Pappy Van Winkle whiskey.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I should say that's from Marketing Land. A guy named Jacob Bodzgar wrote an article on Marketing Land where he cited that and the Disney Vault is really good examples.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Disney Vault is 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, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was a big one. And Bodsgaard 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?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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, nah, you better go get one right now because they may not be around next week.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The people who made Hatchimals Spin Master. Hatchimals were really hard to find in, I think 20, 16, 17 and 18. And spin master was basically accused of purposefully using scarcity marketing. And for their part, they said, hey, we were totally caught off guard three years in a row by the popularity of Hatchimals. And other people were like, that's bs. You can totally ramp up production pretty fast. Another must have toy was Fingerlings. Remember them from like last year, the year before? Yeah, they were like little monkeys or sloths or dragons or whatever that would hang on to your finger. And they were little finger sized robots that would like blink and blow kisses and do all sorts of cute stuff.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Terrifying.

[Josh Clark]

They weren't. They were cute instead of uncanny because they weren't kind of cartoonish.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

The words finger sized robots together sound terrifying to me.

[Josh Clark]

They would cut your throat while you slept. But they were caught unaware. Even though they really tried hard to make them hit through social media, they were still surprised when it actually happened. But they ramped up production. They brought a third factory in China online. They went from shipping via cargo boat to air transport to get supplies here faster. And they were able to ramp up and meet demand pretty quickly. So the idea that Hatchimals just couldn't possibly do that really smelled to a lot of people. Like they were purposefully using scarcity marketing.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, scarcity I mean, it's an interesting concept because you see it everywhere. You know, they have restaurants that, you know, here in Atlanta, Holman and Finch had the Holman and Finch burger that.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Like one day a week, like, we'll sell 100 of them starting at 10pm on this night.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And then everyone's like, oh, my God, what is in that burger?

[Josh Clark]

People would line up the block. Yeah, yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Or this is a nice little tidbit here that you dug up about supermarket experiments.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's from an article from Market Watch by Mark Elwood.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's amazing. Even putting up a sign for soup that says limit 12 per person will make people be like, oh, I should. I should probably buy 12 of these.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

For whatever reason Campbell's might. They might stop making their chicken noodle soup.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Or in this case, it was soup that was on sale. So who knows what the price is going to go back to, you know?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, that's true.

[Josh Clark]

So one of the other things that scarcity produces is this idea that there are haves and have nots. Right. So it's the idea that you're fearful of missing out or fearful of your kid not loving you isn't enough. There's a whole other cognitive bias of being a have not of being left out in the cold, which I guess is a fear of missing out. But there's also the benefit of being a have where if you're talking about like a fingerling, which is a $15 toy, but people were crazy for those things either last year or the year before. Just about anybody can afford this $15 toy. So even if you're like a have not throughout the year, you're down on your luck. Maybe you're unemployed or you're underemployed. Things just aren't going your way. You could still camp out and wait for that late night restocking of fingerlings and get your kid that toy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And for that time, you are a have. And maybe even somebody with a much higher social status than you couldn't get that fingerling, which makes it all the more sweet. And then let's also not forget, like we said, this is during the holiday season, so emotions like count extra. So to be a have when you're normally not during the holiday season because you got a must have toy is exponentially increased.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's a big deal. Because even if it's just emotionally equal for a brief period of time, it can be a big deal for somebody. I say we take our final break here.

[Josh Clark]

Same here.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And then we come back and talk about the worst people toy flippers right after this.

[Josh Clark]

Foreign.

[Announcer]

Support for this show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, buys one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc, SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures tired.

[Apollo Sponsor]

Of juggling sales tools or spending hours on prospecting just to book a few meetings? Meet Apollo, the Go to Market platform for finding leads, connecting with buyers and closing deals all in one place. Apollo gives you access to over 210 million contacts and AI that handles all your busywork finding leads, drafting emails and even prioritizing your day. So stop paying for five different sales tools when one does it all. Visit Apollo I.O. and sign up free today.

[Josh Clark]

Hey everybody, we're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026 and eventually Canada will tell you your dates.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We're going to do at least three.

[Chuck Bryant]

Legs and the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th and then finally back at Sketchfest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. And then April 16th, 17th and 18th, we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry, you can get all the info you need and buy tickets@stuffyou should know.com, click on the tour button and thank us Later.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, so I set up. The worst people are toy flippers. Obviously there's a lot of really, really bad people in the world. And I'm being somewhat hyperbolic, but I do think somewhat the idea of buying, targeting and buying a lot of must have toys to sell later for profit on ebay makes you a pretty rotten person. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and lay that judgment down.

[Josh Clark]

Some people do. I reserve judgment for the ones who do it professionally. I think if you are a person who is just trying to augment your, your own, like, holiday expenses and you are foreseeing a lack of supply ahead of time, I say more power to you.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm not into it. I feel the same way about ticket scalpers.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's exactly. I mean, it's the same thing, basically.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's buying up a bunch of things sometimes, and this is completely gross and awful. Using bots.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's the pits.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Especially for concert tickets. Like when bots buy up all the best concert tickets.

[Josh Clark]

Especially our tickets.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly.

[Josh Clark]

I don't think anybody uses bots on ours.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, probably not. But actually, stuff you should know is we've seen very few bad examples of people trying to overcharge for a sold out show. More times than not, it's a fellow listener that's like, hey, just come along. You can sit next to me for face value or I'll even give it to you.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that happens quite a bit. And yeah, I mean, there's only been a couple where somebody's like, you know, a million dollars. And of course they didn't sell it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

But, yeah, we haven't run into that. Mostly the problem is from ticket outlets just charging ridiculous fees on top of our ticket price.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, that makes us mad. And you all should know we don't have control over that. No, we're the Eddie Vedder of podcasting.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But if you ever find yourself in a situation where you got shut out of a stuff you should know show and your option is to not go or to pay like a ridiculous amount, just send us an email, we'll put you on the list.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, God, Chuck. Wow, you just opened some floodgates.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I mean, there's very few list spots, so it's not like, you know, right.

[Josh Clark]

Now you just started a must have toy frenzy for the list. Look what you've done.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, let's get back to bots. These bots are so savvy. That they can. They can buy out. They can have hundreds of credit card numbers on file because sometimes they'll have, like a limit to how many things you can buy. They are all these shortcuts and ways to bypass all of these safeguards put into effect, including captchas. They will hire foreign workers to sit around and type in the captchas to get through security, which, I mean, if.

[Josh Clark]

There is anything that says holiday spirit, more than that, I can't think of it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But these bots can sometimes buy out something in the second that it goes up online for a regular human being to say, oh, all right, they've released the tickets or the $mm gone.

[Josh Clark]

Because they. They'll. So what they'll do is they'll go on to like, retail websites and figure out what the unique ID is for the product that they're looking for.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's the real art.

[Josh Clark]

It'll start. Right. It'll start monitoring that page because people who build these pages will put them out and just won't, you know, kind of really open the curtain for hours ahead of time. So the bot will have the page targeted and just keep refreshing it hundreds of times a second.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Until that sale goes live. And they will have ordered scores of these things or dozens or hundreds, whatever, however many it can, before you can. Even if you're sitting there refreshing your browser between the time it takes to refresh your page, they will have wiped the place out using these bots. And then if you're truly sophisticated, you probably have another set of bots who take your inventory and then put it up for sale at some point. Exorbitant price on Amazon or ebay or Craigslist or something like that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. The worst people.

[Josh Clark]

So, like, you don't even have to do anything. You just stick your bots on it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I stand by it. Even for the enterprising person who I just. I don't know. I have a big problem with someone making money off of someone else's misfortune to not have been able to get that themselves. I don't think it makes someone scrappy or enterprising at all.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, man, that's. That's fine.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'll die on this hill.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, that's fine. So if you are one of those people that Chuck hates and you want to be enterprising, there is a article written by Lisa Smith. It's on Investopedia. It's called the Guide to Reselling Toys at Christmas for Extra Money.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, God.

[Josh Clark]

Which is very innocuous. Then there's Some tips, actually, that make a lot of sense if you want to do this. Do you want to go over them, or are you going to remain mute?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You can go over them.

[Josh Clark]

So you could talk to parents if you wanted to, right, Chuck? Yeah, that's right, Josh. Good idea. Because they know what kids want. You can talk to kids themselves, which makes sense. I mean, just go right to the horse's mouth. I've already said the same thing, Josh. You can talk to Santa. I thought this was pretty enterprising. Like, imagine if you are trying. So what you're trying to do here is to identify what toy you want to buy as early, ahead of time as possible so that you can have identified the hot season, the hot toy of the season, and bought them before the demand really struck. So you talk to mall Santas, hang out in stores. You can talk to cashiers, stock people, all that stuff. Because not only will they know what toy you need to look out for, they'll know when these new supplies are coming in. Maybe slip them a Starbucks card or something like that with 10 bucks on it as a thank you. But be sure to deduct that from your bottom line.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Bribery. Deduct that. Bribery.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And then you can actually hang out in chat rooms. There's entire websites that are dedicated to this kind of stuff that are, you know, that say, like, here's the toys we're looking for. I spotted some at this, you know, Walmart or whatever. This stock guy said that Walmart replenishes them on Thursdays at 10. There's a lot of stuff you can do if you really wanted to put the legwork in.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Great. Or you could put all that energy into doing something worthwhile.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I know what you're talking about. This is the Michael Larson approach to the holidays. The man who got no whammies on Press yous Luck.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I had no problem with him.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. This is virtually the same thing.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, it's not.

[Josh Clark]

It's somebody giving me.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Because Michael Larson wasn't there wasn't some father who didn't have much money that, you know, overpaid for a doll to make his little girl happy at Christmas time. Michael Arson didn't do that.

[Josh Clark]

Right. He would have, though. I'm sure of it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, goodness.

[Josh Clark]

So that's what you can do if you want to flip toys and ruin the holidays, as far as Chuck's concerned.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And that is. That is a big part of the competition. Or people who will go buy out stocks like, you're not really Facing them nationwide. Unless you're talking about people who release bots onto websites or whatever. But they are out there, and they do. They do actually create competition and help drive that frenzy even further. Because, remember, what's behind Must have toys is scarcity marketing. And if there are people out there who actively contributing to the scarcity, that's a big deal.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Here's what I want to hear from. I want to hear from some women listeners who. Let's say you go on a date from a dating app and you sit down across from your date, and you're like, what do you do? And he goes, I'm a toy flipper. And she's like, what's that? He goes, you know, around Christmas time, I go out and I buy, like, tons of toys that I know little kids really, really want, and then I mark them up so I can make a lot of money off their parents who may not be able to afford it.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And just tell me how that date goes from there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Does it have to be a man and a woman? Can it just be anybody?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It can be anybody. But, you know, I think the guy that does this is the guy that I just did that voice for who's apparently from Jersey. Sure. They're all from New Jersey.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And I love New Jersey.

[Josh Clark]

So I feel like we've learned a lot here.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

We've talked about, you know, how a toy becomes a must have toy of a season. Usually has to do with some combination of advertising and buzz marketing as well as scarcity. The flippers get involved, I think. And I want to back this up, Chuck. There's not a lot of stuff out there on this. This all had to be brought together. This is kind of one of those rare stuff. You should know theses about what makes a must have toy a must have toy. But I think it's. I think it holds up.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Should we talk about some of the. The big toys of this year?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. So those lists that are out there, this helps me. Actually, we put a bunch of. Well, that's the point. We're trying to help you and all of the toy flippers out there. So actually, this is for all the parents. This will help you get a drop on the toy flippers, because I guarantee there are very few toy flippers listening to stuff you should know.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, because we have good people in our audience.

[Josh Clark]

So all those lists that are out there now, we kind of compiled and cross referenced them, a number of them. Lists from Target, Toys, Tots, Pets and more. That's just one Amazon. The Today Show, Toy Insider, the Spruce Crazy Coupon lady who had a post about toy flipping Walmart and New York Magazine. All of those lists we looked at and we found ones that appeared on at least a couple, if not more. And one of them, the first one, appeared on basically every single list that we saw.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This one, the Blum doll. B L U M E Nothing to do with Arrested Development, but it is. This is something that my daughter might like, apparently. This is another thing you add water to and it blooms. But this is. I don't think it hatches from an egg. I think this doll just, like, grows like a Chia Pet might, kind of.

[Josh Clark]

And like, their hair that grows is. I can't tell. It looks like some sort of foam or Styrofoam or something, but it takes different shapes, like pineapples or cakes or something like that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So cute.

[Josh Clark]

And There's, I think, 22 different versions. Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Give me 10,000 of them and I'll walk it up.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but they're also. Yeah, they're super affordable, too. So they're probably going to be the hot must have Christmas toy of the year is Bloom dolls.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Hatchimals are still around.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And there's one that's from how to Train youn Dragon. Toothless Dragon. Yeah, the baby dragon. They have a hatchimal version of him.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

What else? Surely Barbie's on the list.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Barbie has a dream plane.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Whoa.

[Josh Clark]

Which I saw in a couple of lists where. Yeah, it's a plane for Barbie. There's like a snack cart and everything.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Comes with a dog that I guess lives on the plane.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Great.

[Josh Clark]

There's also LOL Surprise. Have you heard of that? No, I hadn't heard of it either until we started researching this. But they're like a whole brand, and a lot of these, including Bloom dolls and LOL Surprise, they tap into, like, this whole trend of unboxing. Do you remember when we talked about unboxing on YouTube where, like, people open toys?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Because our good friend Joe Randazzo did his Lego man unboxing videos that were still, to me, one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Great plug, by the way. But they. They still do that. Like, they're still unboxing. It's a huge trend, and that's worked its way into toys. So. Lol, Surprise is kind of based on that. And there's like a whole line of dolls, but they're like, into, like, DJ stuff and fashion and all that. But they also have Surprise. And there's also a kid named Ryan's World. I don't think that's his last name, but that's his. His YouTube channel and guarantee. We talked about Ryan's World in that Unboxing toys episode. But he's got all sorts of toys that are out where you like. You just don't know what you're getting when you open the thing. It's just surprise. Unboxing.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Weird sub genre on YouTube of unboxing or. I remember we talked about the one where the lady's hands would just play with things.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was the. Yeah. Remember she was like Peppa Pig.

[Announcer]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's so interesting. I'll tell you the one on the list, though, that I like that I usually look at the toys that I'm like, would I like to play this with my daughter? Because that's important. I can't be bored out of my mind, you know?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, good point.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And this Lego make your own movie kit looks pretty cool to me.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I was kind of heartened to see that on a couple of lists, you know, because it's like, this is.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Stop motion movies you can make. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

It's thoughtful, it's inventive.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I love it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Where it's. It's. Yeah, there's. They have a bunch of different stages and backgrounds and props, including a banana. It's great. So you learn how to make. Are you going to get. Get her that?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I might.

[Josh Clark]

I think you should.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You want to come over, make a movie?

[Josh Clark]

Anytime, buddy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

Can we make a. A flaming hoop out of a coat hanger and do things with that, too?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. And then the other one was the Fisher Price Lincoln Moles, which are super cute, including the Smooth Move sloth.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Hey, I'm down with Fisher Price.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And sloths are huge. Huge right now. Yeah. Do you remember Playmobil?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Playmobil.

[Josh Clark]

Remember, they were like the vaguely European kind of action people, but there was nothing like violent or military about them. They would explore or.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I probably recognize them. I definitely know that name.

[Josh Clark]

You've seen it a million times, right? When you see it, I'll look it up and show it to you later, but you'll see it and be like, yeah, of course.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wait, I see him right there. Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. There you go.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I was kind of a Fisher Price kid. But, you know, we still have some of that stuff that our daughter plays with that we had when we were kids, like the barn and the boat. You know, it holds up.

[Josh Clark]

Definitely does hold up. You got anything else? Got nothing else you gonna go buy a bunch of toys and flip them?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else except for 20,000 Hatchimals in my garage, man.

[Josh Clark]

Here's the other thing, though, Chuck. Like, you're taking a risk because you got to predict what the must have toy is. And if you. If you guess wrong, you got 20,000 Hatchimals that nobody wants.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Boy, I'd love to see that happen in real life.

[Josh Clark]

I guarantee it happens. So just keep an ear out, all right? If you want to know more about the must have toys, there's basically nothing you can't know that we haven't already told you. So just, I guess, go get your. Your kids some Christmas toys.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Is that a good way to sign off?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's great.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, since I said, is this a good way to sign off? It's time for listener mail.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm going to call this from a teacher. We always like to shout out our teachers and their. Their students.

[Public Investing Sponsor]

Hey, guys.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Just sending one of what I'm sure is among infinite thank yous that you receive as a teacher who regularly references knowledge I gained from listening to your show in my class. My students unwittingly and I are eternally grateful for your work. They give a hearty laugh whenever I steal your character's tuk Tuk, the wise proto homo sapien and Erg, the folly prone genetic defect to elucidate points about the evolution of early humans. I knew you wouldn't mind my poaching that that's what you think.

[Josh Clark]

John, you'll be hearing from our lawyers.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

John, you're the toy flipper of teachers. Just kidding. The reason I'm writing is to say I think you should not be discouraged by any listener mail you receive telling you to keep your opinions to yourself. My favorite episodes are the ones where either or both of you have such strong feelings about the subject that you can't help but go on a rant. Maybe it's just because I agree with every rant, but I feel like it is important to take a stand on issues that matter to you and admit that you're human beings with a real stake in the game. Thanks again. I'll keep listening as long as you keep podcasting. That is from John Labushkin. So thank you, Mr. Labushkin, and hello to your students. Mr. Labuschkin's class.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Hi, guy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You got a cool teacher.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he does sound pretty cool. He's doing God's work, teaching the next generation.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

I hope he doesn't work in a public school because he's going to be like, can't say God's work. If you want to get in touch with us like Mr. Labuschkin did, or if you're a toy flipper who has an argument against Chuck's argument, we want to hear from you.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Bring it.

[Josh Clark]

You can go on to stuffyouchouchouchouknow.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us an email to stuff [e-mail] Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

[Josh Clark]

Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Announcer]

Support for this show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, buys one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc, SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures tired.

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[Josh Clark]

Hey everybody, we're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026 and eventually Canada will tell you year dates too.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right, we're going to do at least three legs. And the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th, and then finally back at SketchFest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. And then April 16th, 17th and 18th, we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry. You can get all the info you need and buy tickets@stuffyou should know.com, click on the tour button and thank us later.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Josh Clark]

Guaranteed Human.