Christmas Isn’t About Bagging a Furby

I headed for this holiday season primed for the hunt. I’d kept my ear to the ground for early predictions of which toys were likely to reign supreme. I scanned catalogs, cruised toy stores, made mental notes of what commercials my kids watched on TV.

But as usual, the window of opportunity slammed shut on my fingers before I could even get my checkbook out.

I started my Christmas shopping . . . and the only toy my children want already was sold out.

Tickle Me, Elmo. Fingernail Fun. Tamogotchi . . . a string of missed opportunities from Christmases past. This year, add Furby to the A list of toys Mommy wasn’t quick enough to nab before they disappeared from the shelves.

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It’s an annual holiday ritual in many households, this to-the-wire toy hunt, ranking right up there in popularity with climbing a rickety ladder in the rain to string Christmas lights along the eaves.

By the time the buzz about the year’s hot toys reaches the parental hordes, the items themselves are but toy store memories.

Toy makers insist they are not to blame: If they could foresee the popularity surges that make some toys stand out each year, they would boost production early enough to capitalize on them.

The shortages, they say, are simply the end product of a process that begins 18 months before, when buyers from the nation’s major chain stores first preview the toys each company is planning for the coming year.

Then, at a fair in New York each February, the buyers make their own Christmas lists, placing orders for the number of toys they think their stores can sell. That signals the companies to begin production.

Toys begin appearing on store shelves--and in television commercials--in early fall. But by the time a toy catches fire, the companies say, it often is too late to adjust production schedules to meet the escalating demand. Toy manufacturers say they, like the buying public, often are caught by surprise.

But I suspect they revel in the shortage mentality created when demand exceeds supply.

The president of Tiger Electronics Inc., which makes the popular Furby, admitted earlier this fall that the company might not produce enough dolls to “ensure the holiday demand.

“We don’t want to be too overconfident and flood the market,” company president Roger Shiffman said.

Meanwhile, the company didn’t stint on advertising, backing the toy with a multimillion-dollar campaign of television commercials that began the first week of October and hasn’t stopped.

But I guess there’s nothing that jacks up a toy’s popularity like long lines outside toy stores, a thriving black market in cyberspace and the perception among kids that it’s the one toy everyone simply has to have.

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There is something decidedly un-Christmas-like about them, these underground schemes that spring up each season, dangling sought-after toys at inflated prices before desperate parents.

There are crudely lettered cardboard signs posted on lampposts near malls and schools--”FURBYS, $100”--more than three times the $35 list price.

There’s the man in North Hollywood who, gambling on a hunch, snatched up hundreds of Furbys when they first went on sale and is now selling them for upward of $150 each--to people who then resell them for more.

There are online auctions offering Furbys to the highest bidders--at prices up to $1,000.

And then there are the children, whose eyes light up at the sight of the computer-activated toys giggling and babbling on TV . . . and who are headed for disappointment, big-time, come Christmas Day.

I suppose it’s an example of capitalism in action, a tribute to the entrepreneurial spirit, confirmation that the early bird really does get the worm.

But it feels to me like another case of misguided adults turning the quest for Christmas magic into a case of winner-takes-all.

So, with apologies to my children, I am bowing out of the competition this year. I’ve spent my last chilly dawn in a toy store line, made my last set of desperate phone calls in the futile search for this kiddie version of the Holy Grail.

And I’ll confront their long faces on Christmas Day with this tale from our past:

Remember two years ago, when your sister coveted a manicure set she saw on TV? I made its pursuit my full-time job and, with the help of a co-worker, finally turned up one on Christmas Eve.

Maybe all her anticipation had reached a level no toy could satisfy. Or maybe it was just a case of something looking much better on TV. But Fingernail Fun turned out to be not much fun after all, and after a few failed attempts to create the kind of glamour that had been promised on TV, my disappointed daughter cast Fingernail Fun--and her Christmas illusions--aside.

She and I both learned a lesson that day: There are some things worse than not getting what you want on Christmas Day . . . like getting what you asked for and finding out it wasn’t worth the trouble, that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.