There’s No ‘It’ Toy This Christmas For People To Fight Over This Year

I don’t have kids, so I may be wrong here, but it’s my understanding that parents spend the days leading up to Black Friday training like Rocky and camping out in front of the nice Target (there’s always a nicer Target, and it’s usually located in the same plaza as the nice Chilis) with the goal of being the first person to grab a Tickle Me Elmo without getting assaulted. It’s kind of how we ring in the Christmas season? A Home Alone marathon on TV and taking a non-fatal stab wound to the leg over an iPad? Well, according to The Washington Post (via Jezebel), confused parents all across the country are putting their brass knuckles back into storage, because they won’t need them this year:

“There are no hot toys this year; there really aren’t,” said Gerrick Johnson, a toy industry analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “We don’t have a Tickle Me Elmo or a Zhu Zhu Pet or a Cabbage Patch Kid — nothing that is approaching phenomenon status.”

Instead, decades-old classics are inching their way back to the top of Christmas lists. According to a National Retail Federation survey released Thursday, 26 percent of shoppers said Barbies would be their primary purchase for girls. For boys, Legos were the most popular item, with 10.6 percent of customers on board.

There you have it. If you have a kid in your life, throw them a Barbie or Star Wars Lego and call it a day. But get them the real shit, because kids don’t want your off-brand Dollar Tree trash. There’s nothing worse than ripping into a Barbie doll-shaped present Christmas morning and finding a fake Barbie where a real Barbie should be, her stick-on eyes staring at you as if to say: “I know my left leg looks like a melted plastic nub, but you’re the one who owns me, so let’s just accept that both of our lives kind of suck.”

Fun Fact: As a Canadian person, I’ve never experience Black Friday. We have Boxing Day, but it’s not the same; it happens on December 26th and it’s really just an excuse to get away from the Christmas dinner turkey fart fog that’s blanketed your home. But since I’m currently living south of the border, a friend and I will be doing Black Friday stuff. And by ‘doing Black Friday stuff’, I mean ‘watching people bum-rush the barricades in front of a mall entrance and getting into scream-fights over discounted bottles of slightly-damaged One Direction perfume’. Ring the bells, Christmas is here! U-S-A! U-S-A!

(Pic via Toledo Blade)