"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

I'll admit, using the only Dickens quote I actually know is pretty lame, but it describes my mood. This is the most invigorating time for the toy business, but also the most difficult. Perhaps I should have chosen the next part of that quote, "it was the age of foolishness".

We are making final choices for our toy selection for the Christmas flyer and the task is not an easy one. The real problem, and this is where the foolishness comes in, is that when you choose product, you actually have to make sure that Big Box is not going to sell the item below cost in desperation because they are not selling 10,000 units a day in late October. Forget the quality or originality of the product - if it collects dust in our warehouse for two years, what's the point.

As a specialty toy company - or educational toy dealer - or whatever you want to call us (assuming you want to call us something), we don't sell a lot of mainstream product, but we understand that there are certain brands the customer wants. For instance, we usually carry some select Hasbro items every year to accommodate. Last year we had a ton of Transformers - c'mon, who doesn't like Transformers.

In any event, a quick example: I want to carry the Dangerous Book for Boys Game this year. You may remember the semi-controversial book from a couple years ago that is now being made into a Disney movie (I guess it won't be controversial anymore - although somehow Miley Cyrus was for a week.... I wonder if Kurt Russel is going to be in the movie, remember the Disney classic The Computer Wore Tennis Shows). Anyway, the game retails for $19.99 but for some reason Amazon is already selling it for $12.21. That is below our cost. It's not even Christmas yet, nobody is even really selling the item yet, and the lowest price otherwise on the internet is $19.99. It is beyond me....

Back to my selections, maybe I'll have to just stick with what I know: Iron Man Rocket Blaster. Oops, price is already being dropped on that....