Cool Heads Prevail in Hunt for Hot Toys

It wasn’t a soccer game or PTA meeting that brought Karen Kolbach and Ilene Montembeau together, but the two had identical goals when they met a year ago: a rabid quest for the Sony PlayStation 2--last year’s must-have hot toy.

Little more than strangers today, the two mothers spent three consecutive weeks together last November and December camping out in an Anaheim electronics store to get their goods.

This year, there are new hot toys--Microsoft’s Xbox, Nintendo GameCube and GI Joe Paratrooper are on plenty of shoppers’ lists--but Kolbach, Montembeau and thousands of others have cooled in their drive to have the latest, greatest toy.

Must-have gifts are a phenomena that have marked the holiday season in recent decades--who could forget the toy store riots of the ‘80s over all things Cabbage Patch, or the fur that flew beyond festive for Tickle Me Elmo in the ‘90s?

But mall workers and store clerks everywhere say there is something kinder and gentler about the holiday shopper this season, even when it comes to the most sought-after gifts.

“They’re all doing it by phone. I must get hundreds of calls a day,” says Richard Thomas, working in the electronic game section in Fry’s in Fountain Valley. The store has no advance notice of when an elusive Xbox or GameCube shipment is arriving, so shoppers feel they have to inquire daily on the chance some may have come in.

“But people are polite,” Thomas says. “They just say, ‘I’m just doing my daily call,’ and I tell them we don’t have any.... It’s nothing like last year.” And last year was indeed something. Fueled by breakthrough graphic technology, short supply and an aggressive buying public, the debut of PlayStation 2 (simply “PS2” to video gamers) created a holiday sensation.

“It was insane,” recalled one store clerk. “I thought people were going to kill each other to get one.... Thank God that’s over.”

“This year, I’d say I get 40 to 50 calls asking for the Xbox during my shift,” says Breanne Cadabona, 19, who works at Best Buy in Huntington Beach. “But it’s nothing like last year with the PS2 ... not even close.”

Inside Fry’s Electronics in Anaheim, the store where Kolbach and Montembeau hunkered down last Christmas, the scene is much calmer, according to one store worker who witnessed a far different daily scene last year. “I don’t really know why, but it just feels different ... and the people seem different.”

Last Christmas, Montembeau spent hours in a folding chair inside the store for 22 days before a shipment of PS2s arrived and she bought the game system for her 16-year-old son, Michael. “But I still can’t believe I did that.... I would never do it again.”

Kolbach says the dozen people on the waiting list started out pretty chummy, but it was dog-eat-dog when the game systems arrived Dec. 13. “When they finally got them in, it got really ugly,” Kolbach recalls. “But I had spent so much time and I was driven to purchase that item.”

Some say the fact that so many shoppers already own a new game system has a lot to do with the reduction in Christmas stalking this season. But others say there is something else out there hanging like a benevolent mistletoe over the aggressive shoppers hitting the malls--something closer to the heart.

“After the attacks on the World Trade Center, the whole hot gift thing just doesn’t seem that important,” says Cathy Jacobs, 34, of Woodland Hills.

“Last year, I would have done anything for the Christmas Barbie for my daughter,” she says. “That stupid doll was an obsession ... waiting in line, calling stores.

“She got it, but the whole thing seems so stupid now,” Jacobs says. “We are definitely toning it down this year and realizing the things that really matter.”