Go go pets hamsters & accessories stock updates & discussion.

FireMaiden

Hi Everyone, I got my attention drawn to this forum when I saw clicks to my blog, thank you to Crystal on here! I'm FireMaiden and I had posted the screen shots of the sneak peeks into the future of Zhu Zhu Pets. I'm happy to have found this forum to share the love (or obsession) with you from across the ocean.

I'm in the U.S. and not certain if any others here are within the U.S. I'd love to take a peek into how the Zhu Zhu sales are going on your side of the pond. Are they being sold over there or are they scarce as here?

I think this might be my next blogging subject to do with the Zhu Zhu's so please any input would be great!

Oh, also if anyone is within the U.S. (not certain if they ship abroad or not) val-u-toy (dot) com has instock right now the car/garage, slide, wheel and the hamsters! The hamsters are $13.50 and you can't choose the color they send you but the limit is 2 per person.

cloverfan

can i ask all you hamster knowledable peeps a question???

I have bought my son a hamster(dont know which one! lol) and the car and garage but i was just wondering if he needs 2 hamsters? do they interact??

TIA xx

Maximouse

Well, that's me done in tonight, better get some sleep - up for work at 5am :rolleyes: note to self - must remember to eat tomorrow or should I say today.

:hello: Nighty, night and will be trying to follow the thread at work, but USB 3g dongle is painfully slow... X

lizdav

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Looking at the link someone posted, Character said:

"Jerry Healy, marketing director at Character Options, the UK distributors of the Go Go Pets series, said demand for the hamsters had been spread mostly by word of mouth.
He explained that a robust marketing campaign had been put in place from early August, but it quickly became evident that sales were exceeding expectations anyway. It's thought between 600,000 and 700,000 have now been sold throughout the UK."


Put that way, the numbers on ebay and amazon marketplace are small beer.

Very true.

I have made no secret here that I work closely with Character and prior to investing time in developing my own GGH website and seeing early stock sell out, I probed at that time to make sure that I wasn't going to be disappointed by OOS everywhere.

I originally intended that my site would be price comparison and that there would be some consumer price pressure to create competition and differentiate retailers on price.

Back in August, Character told me about the consignments coming in and were confident that demand would be met.

3 months on and I don't have a price comparison site any more ... I had to adapt and I have a hamster tracker site instead to find the bl**dy things almost at ANY price.

I think that everyone has been caught out and perhaps the late UK launch just didn't give enough time to see the demand and to plan for scaled up manufacturing.

I don't think I have EVER seen demand like this and of course it is exaggerated by the numbers of pieces to collect if you want a 'full set'.

Another thing to consider is that whenever something becomes more scarce it seems to become the 'must get' item fuelling a vicious circle.

The sad thing is that there are probably at least 50% of parents who haven't started yet and have NO chance of getting the hamster stock when they start testing out what their kids want from Santa and hear about Go Go Hamsters for the 1st time.

FireMaiden

cloverfan wrote: »

can i ask all you hamster knowledable peeps a question???

I have bought my son a hamster(dont know which one! lol) and the car and garage but i was just wondering if he needs 2 hamsters? do they interact??

TIA xx

They don't really interact exactly, but they do chase each other around (or knock each other over lol) if they are in their playhouse as I've seen. You could have races with them on the floor. Plus you don't want one hamster to get lonely right?

fazeypie

FireMaiden wrote: »

Hi Everyone, I got my attention drawn to this forum when I saw clicks to my blog, thank you to Crystal on here! I'm FireMaiden and I had posted the screen shots of the sneak peeks into the future of Zhu Zhu Pets. I'm happy to have found this forum to share the love (or obsession) with you from across the ocean.

I'm in the U.S. and not certain if any others here are within the U.S. I'd love to take a peek into how the Zhu Zhu sales are going on your side of the pond. Are they being sold over there or are they scarce as here?

I think this might be my next blogging subject to do with the Zhu Zhu's so please any input would be great!

Oh, also if anyone is within the U.S. (not certain if they ship abroad or not) val-u-toy (dot) com has instock right now the car/garage, slide, wheel and the hamsters! The hamsters are $13.50 and you can't choose the color they send you but the limit is 2 per person.

they are pretty scarce over here too! hamsters will be made available at toys r us over the weekend but will be limited to 1 of each item per customer- i believe most retailers are imposing those limits now. i've also noticed that some retailers have been sneaking their prices up to above the rrp- check out https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_0_4?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=go+go+hamsters&sprefix=go+g
accessories are harder to find than the hamsters- the balls are like gold dust. there arent even that many of them on ebay and they are being sold on there now for near enough £40 (rrp is £9.99)

anyway, thanks for sharing your news- glad to hear that its not just the uk struggling for stock!

neverdespairgirl

FireMaiden wrote: »

Oh, also if anyone is within the U.S. (not certain if they ship abroad or not) val-u-toy (dot) com has instock right now the car/garage, slide, wheel and the hamsters! The hamsters are $13.50 and you can't choose the color they send you but the limit is 2 per person.

Very kind of you - sadly, I think we're in the UK. That site says:

"Currently, VAL-U-TOY.com is only accepting orders for shipment within the United States. "

lizdav

Princess_Coupon wrote: »

They didn't list today as we kept crashing the site F5ing so they spat their dummy out and didn't list

Bit harsh .. under ordinary circumstances the stock would have been listed and they did try. I cannot share numbers which were given to me in confidence, but the exaggerated load on their server caused by people F5ing exceeded the server design and load by MORE than a factor of 10.

Plie another 10 cars on the roof of yours and see how fast you can drive then with that extra load.

They were trying to load and that was inhibited by that factor.

At the same time, Toys R Us bucked under the strain ... and Toys r Us have much bigger resources than Character Online's website.

They obviously took a considered view that it would not nmake sense to complete the listing when everyone was watching and would pile in.

Princess_Coupon wrote: »

Lizdav works somewhere that gets all the stock info and said if it was her she'd list in the middle of the night

I work as an affiliate for myself and just talk with Character sometimes several times a day .. but maybe get a little more access than most customers. MaxiMouse essentially approaches the retailers with the same inquisitive nature.

And I am a HE rather than a she :rotfl:but an easy assumption to get wrong from the screenname.

soccergoods

if you know character so well tell them that they should stop supplying the online shops that hike the prices to high. like Jacinthebox. I placed a order with them two weeks ago when prices where still rrp with them than they cancelled claiming not to have any stock. Now there prices are £29.99 for hamsters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

neverdespairgirl

lizdav wrote: »

And I am a HE rather than a she :rotfl:but an easy assumption to get wrong from the screenname.

Sorry, I'd also assumed it was short for Elizabeth.