Greg's Corner

The Christmas of broken Hatchimals

Prior to the holidays, we talked about the must have toys of the season. One of those toys was called ‘Hatchimals’. They’re these odd-looking creatures that hatch from their own plastic egg to the joy of children everywhere, except for a number of people whose plastic eggs didn’t hatch on Christmas.

Back in the day, circa pre-internet days, it was almost customary for a child’s toy to break on Christmas day. Sometimes the toy was already broken but in most cases the toy was usually broken by the kids themselves. Back then if a toy was broken the only recourse you had was to try to take it back to the store and either get an exchange, if they even had any in stock, or get a full refund and try to get another one once the stores have been restocked.

Now in modern times, parents have a new option to deal with broken toys on Christmas, and that’s to take to social media to complain. In this era of instant gratification, parents took to Twitter hammering the toy manufacturer with complaints and tech support requests, on Christmas Day, the day when they’re not working but expecting the toy company to be fully staffed.

While no one wants to see their kid disappointed on Christmas morning, making these demands on Christmas morning sets a bad example on how to handle a bad situation calmly and instills a sense of entitlement into some children. Just let them know that it’s not their fault but it may take some time to get their toy fixed. That’s not to say that they won’t be bored with the toy within days after they get it.

Here’s hoping you had fully functional toys on Christmas.