Luck needed to nab Hatchimals in Hawaii

While it’s still possible for Oahu residents to get their hands on one of the most highly sought-after gifts this holiday season, you’ll need a bit of luck to score a Hatchimal.

Hatchimals, made by Canadian toy manufacturer Spin Master, are computerized stuffed animals that are sensitive to touch. There are five different kinds — a Bearakeet, Burtle, Draggle, Penguala and Owlicorn — and each is programmed to react accordingly to various interactions. Like a real-life version of the 1990s electronic Tamagotchi, kids must “hatch” their Hatchimal from the egg it’s packaged in (a process that can take more than a half-hour to complete) and can continue to interact with it like the Furby, another popular toy launched in the ’90s. But Spin Master wasn’t able to accurately forecast demand for the product, which led to initial shipments selling out well before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

“I remember when I was 6 or 7 years old and I got my first Cabbage Patch Kid,” recalled Kapolei resident Jacque Motz, 36, a mother of two daughters and self-described “crazy mom” who stood outside Target for two hours on Nov. 20 to buy her 6-year-old daughter a Hatchimal. “I went out to dinner with my girlfriends on Saturday and we all have kids, so we were all talking about it. That night on the way home, my girlfriend and I decided to stop at Target and see what was going on.”

After being denied at the Salt Lake store — “I asked one of the stock guys if they had any Hatchimals and he looked at me and just started laughing like I was crazy,” Motz said — she went home for a few hours before heading to Target in Kapolei at 6 a.m. Two hours later, Motz walked out with one of just two toys allocated to the store that day.

“My daughter is really going to be into it,” she said. “I think she’s going to be really excited to get one for Christmas this year.”

Store employees at multiple big-box retailers, all of whom were not authorized to speak to the media, indicated that the only way to find a Hatchimal on Oahu at this point is to show up first thing in the morning after shelves have been restocked. Stores like Target, Walmart, Kmart and Toys R Us will continue to receive product shipments, but employees said there’s no way to accurately predict when exactly the Hatchimals will show up or how many will be sent to Hawaii.

That leaves gift-givers on a mission with online retailers as their final option this Christmas. Searching the web on Black Friday led to Hatchimals priced at $250 and up — a more than 400 percent markup over the suggested retail price of about $60 to $70.