A while ago, I was at our local shop and I noticed that they had the new Shopkins Happy Places blind boxes so I decided to grab one. Turned out the boxes were printed with four different designs, so I grabbed one of each.
I got home, opened them up and the little trinket above was in one of them. A limited edition! Yay! I've never seen a Moose limited edition before. I never expect to get one and frankly don't even think about them because the chances of getting one are so remote.
It took less than an hour for the initial excitement to wear off and for me to realise that this was way less exciting than the toy I otherwise would've gotten in it's place. My shopkins dolls have no use for a projector and being all one colour with no painted details, it has very limited play value. I have never been less impressed by a toy.
But I posted a picture of it on Instagram anyway. Oh dear. I didn't know that the blind boxes hadn't really been released pretty much anywhere yet. I spent the next forty eight hours fielding private messages from people I'd never even heard of before. Some were fairly reasonable. "Where'd you get that?", "What kind of pack did that come in?", "Could you upload a pic of the collector's list?" Some were less reasonable "Can you upload a picture of each individual item in the collector's list? The pictures you've put up aren't clear enough." "Would you be willing to go back to where you got that, buy the rest of their blind boxes and mail them to me so I can get a limited edition too?" "You should give that to me."
I kid you not. I got a message from someone basically saying "You should give that to me." I assumed they were joking and messaged back that I was considering putting it on Ebay since I don't want it and could send them a link when I did. They weren't joking. Over the next two hours I got eight abusive messages from that person saying I was a money-hungry b*tch, who thought I was going to make my fortune with this thing on Ebay, but they were going to tell everyone not to buy it because I was this, that and the other. And anyone who bought it wouldn't pay me for it and blah, blah, blah. Then twelve hours later an apology and a "so when Ebay goes to sh*t on you, contact me and I'll do a trade." Yeah, no. I didn't reply to that but if I had it would've said something along the lines of "After that outburst, I'd sooner set it on fire than send it to you, thanks." Incidentally, I have no delusions about making a fortune selling it on Ebay. My thinking was, I don't want it. Anyone that wants it enough to be willing to pay for postage is welcome to have it. Anyone that's willing to pay much more than the price of postage is a bit silly and will probably be disappointed in it.
That was the most extreme example but there were about half a dozen collectors with absolutely ridiculous requests that all had tantrums, if I said no. I wasn't photographing every individual item on the collector's list. There are something like sixty items and it had already taken me an hour to photograph each page of the collector list so the pictures were in focus with minimal glare. I also wasn't spending a hundred dollars on toys and fifty dollars on across the world postage for someone I didn't know, on the promise of "I'll pay you back when it gets here." While I knew it had come in one of my blind boxes, I had no idea which one it had come out of so I couldn't tell people which blind box design to look for. Or even if all the limited editions have the same picture on the box. And almost all of these people reacted with nasty little tantrums.
These were not children. I did actually get a few private messages from children saying things like "That's so cool/awesome! Congratulations!" Which weirded me out a bit. Who lets their ten year old think it's ok to send private messages to strangers? But all of the nasty, abusive, angry, nonsense came from adults! Which is so much wronger and weirder. Seriously, I have not bought a single Shopkins thing since then. The whole thing has left a nasty taste in my mouth and frankly I don't want to collect Shopkins if the entire Shopkins collecting community is full of entitled arseholes.
And all over THIS. . .
Which, in all honesty, is probably the most disappointing and pointless toy I have ever seen!
If it makes you feel any better, I think every community and profession has its own share of weirdos, jerks, creeps, etc. I've heard people in the greater knitting community demand that someone sell them yarn, when it was clearly never for sale; it just happens to be rare or what someone else needs. And Mr. BTEG and the Dancer have definitely seen creepy folk in the gaming community. They could tell you stories.... I also find it weird that people let their kids venture out into the greater world of the internet as much as they do.
ReplyDeleteI hope that if you really decide that you don't want it, you sell it for as much as you can get, and buy yourself something that you will enjoy. Or several somethings.
Thanks Barb. For some reason I've always assumed there are no jerks in the doll/toy collecting community. Realistically I suppose there are some everywhere even though most people are nice, I somehow attracted ALL of them that day!
DeleteWow. I am very sorry to read that you had an experience like that! How horrible. I hope that how ever you decide to handle the toy, you can get something good from the experience. I hope it does not spoil your enjoyment of your collection, which is the important thing.
ReplyDeleteThanks Robin!
Delete