Every holiday season boasts a certain specific super popular toy that is in stock for mere minutes and then instantly sold out. This season however, has been particularly rough on my co-workers and I at the Cranberry Township Toys’R’Us

The hottest toys this year are Hatchimals, the NES Classic Edition, and an aspiring third place is the Pokemon GO Plus wristband.

The store gets delivery trucks almost every night, but the staff is never informed of what we will be receiving prior to actually opening the trailer. Even then though, we rarely ever have many, if any, of these popular items.

As for what these toys actually are, a Hatchimal (our definite most sought after toy) is similar to a Furby in mechanics, but much less creepy. They come as a dragon, an owl, or a unicorn and the kicker about them is that they come in an actual egg about 18″ tall and after an indiscriminate amount of time, the toy inside breaks through the shell and hatches.

The NES Classic Edition (my personal favorite) is very similar to the Atari and Sega Flashback consoles, but its an NES. It comes with 30 of Nintendo’s greatest games, such as Metroid, Donkey Kong, and The Legend of Zelda, all pre-installed.

The Pokemon GO Plus is an electronic charm and wristband that can connect to a cellphone with Pokemon GO installed and allows the player to interact with the app and nearby Pokemon in real-time using their wrist charm.

Not a single day passes in the Cranberry Township Toys’R’Us without several calls asking about each of the aforementioned items. Everyone wants one and sadly not everyone will get one. Just this past Saturday night, 40+ people were camped out in front of the store in freezing cold weather to wait for us to open the next morning because they had heard on the local news that we might be getting a shipment of NES Classics and Hatchimals. That’s all they needed to hear and they were breaking out the lawn chairs, thermoses, and heavy winter coats.

Holidays always bring crowded stores and popular items, but I feel there comes a point where it is just taken too far. Not everybody is capable of waiting outside a store for 14 hours to get a toy, be it age, physicality, or a busy schedule keeping them out. Those reasons however, should not be why certain people miss out on getting their kid or grand kid the number one toy on their wishlist.

Think twice before going a bit overboard on something. Ask yourself what really matters the most to you.