Part 1: What's New
I'll post pictures tomorrow. We just received a shipment of "Sensory Art". It looks very cool; I gotta get it on the shelf.
We just received a new shipment of brick building kits. These kits have real miniature bricks. What I really love is that when you get tired of looking at the building you built, you can soak the whole thing in water and re-use the bricks in future projects.
We received two large book orders. We have a ton of new field guides, little kids books, reusable sticker books, and tattoo books. We personally own a ton of these titles and love them.
We've got a bunch of new cuties from Japan. Mini Colored Pencils are back in stock, we've got a bunch of awesome keychains, and a bunch of new mini figurines. No one makes em cuter than Japan.
A whole bunch of board games are on sale. Many of these titles have been on our shelves since we opened. Keeping a product on your shelf that long doesn't make good business sense, but we just love these board games so much that it pained us to clearance them. I'll talk your ear off about any of them if you ask.
We have a ton of new kites. Some great for kids, and some hardcore.
We have a ton of new RC's. The remote control whale is extremely cool. It can swim in water and it has a working blowhole!
All Diamond Art is extremely discounted. we lowered the prices to just above cost AND we're doing Buy 1 Get 1 Free. We need the space for other arts and crafts.
We'll be visiting our hometown in Minnesota at the end of May. We'll be closed most of that week, but local toy expert Elise will keep our store open on Friday May 29th and Saturday May 30th. We'll reopen on June 3rd.
Part 2: Squishy-Geddon
As you probably know, there is a squishy craze going on. First it was Needohs and Dumplings, but it then expanded to all things squishy. Every single company is cleaned out.
I'm happy to say that we jumped the gun and pre-allocated a ton of our most popular squishies from Toy Network. We have it worked out where we'll get a shipment each week of May. I figured we'd do the same for June at the beginning of May.
However, Squishy-Geddon is upon us.
I went to check the status of the June allocations on April 27th, and not only are all June allocations sold out, but the July ones too. If this craze continues, well, it's gonna get interesting.
I don't want to post photos here; whatever is on the shelf will have sold out and new stock will have been rotated in. I'm now posting ads in-store of what's coming in the future. You're welcome to call the store about Squishies-that-aren't-Nee-Doh.
Nee-Doh backorders continue to trickle in. We just sold out of the Galaxy Glow Dreamdrops last week. I expect to be sold out of Nicebergs by the time this post goes live. Again, don't bother calling asking if we have any, we won't tell you, you have to come in.
The Telegraph did an article on our store and the ongoing squishy craze. I appreciate the opportunity.
To clear one thing up, we were quoted as saying that other specialty toy stores are raising prices on Needohs and that we're not. That was a mis-quote. While we aren't raising prices on Needohs, I also don't know of any other toy stores in the area who have raised prices. I think the journalist was surprised we hadn't raised prices, and wanted to get that point across in the article. These things happen, it's a lovely article otherwise.
~David