The author is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
I have the problem that Christmas is approaching, but at the same time the delivery crisis is on the way. Now there are probably a few toys left, but when the festive season comes, the shop windows will quickly run out, I’m afraid.
Those who know how to do it have already done their shopping and are sitting at home in the warm, while people like me are meanwhile throwing themselves into the consumer battle.
The first signs are already there. A colleague claims to have seen empty shelves in a large furniture store. Where there are never empty shelves. There is something uncanny in mind.
In a large toy store I asked about the Playmobil fire truck. I got a somewhat pitying look. Apparently I wasn’t the first to look for it. “It doesn’t exist anymore, it doesn’t come in either.”
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I have also read that there is supposed to be a problem with the Tinker ponies at Schleich. Now one thinks there will be enough other horses made of plastic. But then you don’t know children well. If a child wants exactly this pony or that Playmobil car, then it can lead to big disappointments.
You can’t even rely on Christmas anymore
Yes, it will be said that the young people of all people who suffered the most during the crisis are now being punished because things don’t even run smoothly at Christmas.
I learned from “Wirtschaftswoche” that Playmobil is warning of further bottlenecks. There are no more packaging materials, and then they are waiting for electronic parts from Asia. Meanwhile, Schleich is trying to organize new deliveries of raw materials. One fifth of production is “facing challenges”, including the “Dinosaurs” product line. Well, somehow dinosaurs are used to extinction.
In this context, the Stuttgart monitoring company Price Intelligence is cited, which has already registered significant movements in the toy market. The price for toy figures in online retail has risen by an average of 2.28 percent since August. At the same time, there are 1.2 percent fewer different characters available on the market. The number of figures offered by online retailers has even fallen by almost 13 percent.
The value of toy vehicles has risen in particular, since August they have become more than six percent more expensive. It takes a long search to find a stock that follows such a curve. So it should be worth it to buy rc cars on pallets now. They will later be able to be sold for the price of gold bars.
It is surprising that the security situation has not yet been discussed in Germany. When you’ve seen people arguing over toilet paper, you don’t really want to know what happens when they wrestle over the last Lego technology excavator. I’m afraid the Federal Armed Forces will be deployed domestically.
More: “There has never been such a chaos” – Simba Dickie boss Florian Sieber warns of emptiness under the Christmas tree