Thursday, June 30, 2011

Toys!Toys!Toys!

Oh yes, mums and daddies, its that time of year again - toy sale time! Catalogues with pages and pages of toys and games, crazy mums heading out to the shops at midnight, trolleys everywhere and lay-by lineups that go for hours. Oh the joy of it all!

Image from here

I have to say, i did well this year. Last i went to the Big W toy sale 3 days after it started, expecting that they would still have plenty of the toys i wanted. Uh - Fail! But i was a newbie toy sale-er back then... i didnt know abot the crazy crush of mums who get there bang on midnight and spend half the night in a lay-by line. So this year, a little older and a little wiser, i prepared. I scoured the catalogues and made myself a list of what we wanted to for Flynn and for our two neices and 3 nephews; i double checked prices and Googled the items i liked to make sure they were appropriate; and i did a scout around the store a day or two beforehand so i knew where the things i wanted would be. Genius Mummy!

We ended up getting our two biggest purchases from Myer which meant that when i went to BIg W today i wouldnt have to get as much ( which meant there were less things for me to miss out on ). I didnt go at midnight with the other pyscho-mummies ( sleep is far too precious to me for that! ) but i did go at 8am, after Flynn and I had had breakfast, showered and got dressed. There was hardly anyone there - all the hardcore toy sal-ers had been and gone; and the slowpokes and newbies probably didnt realise the store was open continously from midnight. We were in, shopped, lay-byed and out in 45 mins!

And yes, before i praise myself too much and someone else points it - yes i know you can now do the shopping online. However, not all items are available online and part of me actually likes the planning and the searching and the satisfaction of finding all the stuff on my list. And now we have all the presents sorted for Christmas and all we need to get in December is a present for each other. Cant get much better than that i dont think!
How about you - did you or are you planning to hit up the toy sales this year? Are you an online shopper or a hands on kinda gal like me?

4 comments:

  1. That's pretty insane. We don't have that here, it starts at open time. I think the shops may be open till 9 every night but that's it.

    We went to Big W today and bought munchkin a Lightning McQueen cushion then when I got home I put two lay-bys on, one at Target and one at Kmart. So much easier than fighting with people.

    Last year the freaking store LOST our lay-by so we spent another three hours trying to remember what I'd impulsively pulled off the shelves. Then they found it. I was so pissed off. F'ing Target. They were so rude about it too.

    Ok, my rant done. I'm still so impressed you were out the door at 8am!

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  2. I usually do my laybuy at Target and to be honest I don't worry too much, just laybuy one or two big things and then collect other things throughout the year. There is ALWAYS a toysale in November so I never miss out, and my boys - especially Ollie are so fickle that i worry that what I laybuy now, won't be wanted at Christmas time. The little Flynns are far more easy to please!! Im a bit lost for Flynn this year though - that is the downside to having two boys.

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  3. Here we have Day After Thanksgiving sales. Stores open at 4am or earlier sometimes. I did it once. A friend and I decided we wanted to deals at Toys R Us. I met her at her house at 3AM and we made the drive to Toys R Us. At 4 the doors opened and it was MADNESS. I think the only thing that saved me was I was pregnant with Claire at the time, so people didn't crush me. I got some great deals, but as my friend and I were grabbing the things we wanted, we saw people abandoning carts full of stuff everywhere and getting the hell out. I let David go now. It's more his thing anyways.

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  4. Amy I am so organised that I went 2days before the sale began ;). The couple of things that I wanted for Ida from the catalogue weren't actually reduced, so I went on Monday and got one of them (I was in town for work).

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