There's something about the Christmas season that brings out the best in people, and something about the Christmas SHOPPING season that brings out the worst in people. Every year you see the footage on the news of the men and women wrestling in the Walmart aisles over some random toy that has been promoted as THE toy to have that year. I remember as a kid hearing about people being trampled in shopping malls as they scrambled for Cabbage Patch Kids. (Note: My parents did not participate in such nonsense. Christmas 1983 was the year of the Cabbage Patch Kid; I didn't get mine until my birthday, in October of 1984. While I was disappointed that I didn't get the Cabbage Patch Kid for Christmas, I don't think I have any lasting scars from such deprivation. I think.)

Anyway, we don't have kids, so we have never really gotten to participate in the upper level Christmas shopping craziness. We've never gone for any really trendy gifts for our nieces (the trendiest was the Chicken Dance Elmo, a gift I think my sister-in-law and her husband still hold against us).

However, this year we've rubbed elbows with the insanity. We decided (far too late in the season, apparently) that a good gift for my sister-in-law's family would be a Nintendo Wii. One of my best friends has one, and she said her kids love it, and her parents and grandmother even play with them. It's more of a family console than either the PS3 or the Xbox. It has (from what I've heard) a pretty easy learning curve, and it's even a bit healthier than traditional consoles because of the "wiimote" that requires much more physical movement.

So, we haven't really had a chance to do any shopping yet. We waited until yesterday to go out and start looking. Yeah, we probably waited a few weeks too long. Walmart? Nothing. Circuit City? Nothing. Game Stop? Nothing. Sam's Club? Nothing. Best Buy? Nothing. Oh sure, look online then. Uh, no. Nobody has one. Well, I take that back. Amazon's marketplace (kind of like e-bay) has a few, but they are priced much higher than the actual cost of the console. E-bay also has some, a few edging towards the $500+ range. This is absolutely ridiculous. Circuit City's clerk said they'd put some more out this morning when they opened at ten. A circular came out in this morning's paper advertising them. So what did we see when we drove by Circuit City on our way to the gym? Dozens of cars in their parking lot and a mob of people at the doors, waiting for ten o'clock. Did we stop and join the crowd? Oh, HELL no. We just drove on by.

How is it that a console that has been out for over a year (this is not it's first holiday season) is in such demand? I mean, it isn't even a new toy. So what's the deal?

A clue to this mystery came from the clerk at Game Stop. He said they did have some in stock, but they weren't putting them out until "Black Friday" (the uber-shopping day after Thanksgiving when all the stores have their megasales). And then, each Game Stop in the country was only to put out SIX on Black Friday. And suddenly this all becomes clear. It isn't the toy ITSELF that is creating the hype; it's the manufacturer and the stores that are doing it. The manufacturer holds some back to create a slight shortage. The retailers do the same. And then they advertise advertise advertise the product, getting kids excited about the product and making parents interested in the product. But when they find that the product is hard to get, it creates even more interest and drama. I mean, if you heard that a product was "selling like hotcakes", wouldn't you be curious as to why? Wouldn't it make you wonder, at least a little, how good that product really was? That's exactly what they are doing. And while the product in question, this year the Wii, is pretty cool from all accounts, this artificial hype is inflating the shopping mania surrounding it.

So will we end up getting a Wii for my sister-in-law's family? Probably not this year, unless we happen to stumble across one randomly somewhere. Maybe we can save it for Easter. So what will we get for the kids this year? I don't know. Anybody know some poorly promoted, lead-paint-coated toys we can get for cheap?