What You Can Do to Beat the Toy Shortage This Holiday Season

As the holiday shopping season hits a fever pitch, reports of toy shortages at stores across the nation have some customers concerned.

The shortage doesn’t just involve the hottest toys like Fingerlings and L.O.L. Surprise but even supplies of old standbys like Hot Wheels are running scarce in certain stores.

Toy expert Richard Gotlieb spoke to Inside Edition about the crisis. "This is uncharted territory,” he said of what retailers are facing in 2018. 

Christmas 2018 is the first since one of the only purely toy-dedicated stores, Toys R Us, shut its doors just months ago. Combine that with brisk online sales, the result is brick-and-mortar retailers are left not knowing how much toy inventory to order.    

“Whether you are a consumer, a toy company, or a retailer, or some manufacturer in China somewhere, you don’t know what is going to happen next year. So, when that happens everyone gets cautious,” Gotlieb added. 

Inside Edition went to a Walmart and Target in New York City Monday and found the toy shelves well-stocked, but that might not be the case everywhere.  

“I don’t want people to think we are going to be out of toys and panic, but I would say that don’t wait too long this year,” Gotlieb advised.

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