The next chapter will be Pwetzel’s final one!
I had a blast drawing Kawamel’s family and although these panels were a pain to figure out, I still had fun drawing them one last time!
I’m really tired of getting yelled at by my managers because guests don’t wanna buy chocolate when it’s 100 degrees outside
But please stop letting them gnaw on the merch before you buy it. Not only is it dirty as hell, but I don’t wanna touch your kid’s slobber as I futilely try to scan it because Junior soaked the damn price tag off
Like our trucks have VIP sections right at the front for your damn squishies. We’ll get to them when we get to them.
And I’d STILL have to interact with customers?!
I had a lady come in today who’s been calling nonstop about these damn squishies.
“When do you get truck? When do you guys unload the truck? Can you put some aside? I have 4 kids”
She decided to wrangle up 2 of her iPad kids and go to our store to potentially wait out the unloading.
My supervisor brings out some Sploot Splats and at first, I’m happy she’s so relieved.
But then she started debating how many to buy because in her words, “her kids break them easily”. She flip flopped between buying 4, buying 8 or buying the whole box of 12. My store unfortunately is not enforcing a limit, so my desperate-for-sales supervisor encourages her to buy the whole thing, despite my suggestions that she buy 4.
So she buys the whole set. She has to split between 2 cards because she doesn’t have enough on either to pay the over $100 purchase. And for some reason, I feel awful as I split the purchase. These damn things weren’t on the sales floor for 5 minutes and they’re going to ONE person. She says that she can give these to some of her friends’ kids. Or give them out as party favors!
I’ll preface this by saying that I’m a toy collector. I understand the hunt. I understand the dopamine hit of getting what you want.
But I also understand value. And it pains me to wonder if these kids losing their shit over Needohs actually want these things because they like them, or because their favorite influencer told them to like them. These things hit differently than your Labubus or Beanie Babies or Tickle me Elmos or Cabbage Patch Kids. These squishies are fucking cheap to buy and even cheaper to make. It pains me to think that these kids are gonna buy a shit ton of these things, squish them on camera for a few minutes, cut them open for more content and then promptly throw them into the garbage.
Another lady comes up and buys two freshly unboxed Needoh Dohnuts where she expresses her frustration over seeing the lady who bought a whole box. I start to crack as I explain to her that our store does not have a limit.
My mind races with trying to contextualize whatever emotion I was feeling. I place some knockoff Needohs on the counter for customers to see and try to fight back my tears as I keep ringing customers up.
Eventually though, I snap and I smacked one of the counterfeits off the counter, pissed off.
If your kid has a habit of destroying their toys, you don’t buy them a replacement.
So after calming down in a manager office and eventually clocking out for the day, I’m trying to reframe my thinking.
My supervisor explained that what that lady chooses to prioritize is her business. How she chooses to raise her kids is her business.
So whatever. I’m trying to spin the situation into something positive, but I feel like one of those cashiers forced to sell an entire pallet of Pokemon cards to a single person. It feels so scummy. The lady was quick to admit that she was NOT a reseller, but she still chose to buy 3x the amount she needed for no reason because…nobody was stopping her from doing so. And the fact that it felt like my supervisor was perfectly fine with this because we had a sale of over $100 didn’t help.
Other stores in our company HAVE put limits on Needohs and other squishies.
So I’m just telling myself that I made that lady’s day. She’s hopefully not gonna call anymore and she’s gonna be the hero to her friends’ kids.
In any case, the trend seems to be moving towards those squishy dumplings. Now, I’ve seen tons of videos of those things and those are gonna be MUCH worse than Needohs because they’re blind boxes. Kids and adults alike are only going to be valuing the ultra rare dumplings, so folks are gonna be buying cases of these shits and tossing out their dupes.
To Five Below employees everywhere, I’m praying for you guys this weekend.
If your kids never cared for squishies before but now are SUDDENLY sending you out to stores to buy a bunch….
Buy them ONE.
There’s a very high chance all of those cubes and dumplings and other squishies you’re buying by the armful for your ONE child that insists they’re the greatest things ever will not be their favorite toys come next month.
If you have multiple kids, remember that the Teenie Needohs and Groovy Fruits have 3 in a single pack, so maybe encourage your children to share 1 pack before you buy 3 packs for your 3 kids and eventually start stepping on a maximum of 9 squishies when your kids inevitably go back to their tablets.
Buying one encourages your kid to figure out if they actually like squishies for themselves, rather than influencers telling them to like them. And if they ultimately decide they don’t like NeeDohs, you’ve only got one squishy to worry about collecting dust.
Remember, this is a trend and it’s popular with KIDS. Schools are going to be letting out for summer break very soon, so they’re not gonna be gathering around the lunch tables to show off squishies anymore.