As we enter the shopping season, I offer this simple message: if you see something that you know you need to buy, if at all possible, buy it then. If you don't, you may find yourself regretting it. This is exactly the position in which I now find myself. Allow me to explain.
A few weeks ago, I learnt of a certain Advent calendar. A certain Star Wars themed, Lego based Advent calendar. Now, I might be almost 30 years old, but if there was ever a combination of words to get my inner child hyperactive, these are they.
At the start of November, the time when I first allow myself to accept the inevitable arrival of Christmas, I made a mental note to keep my eyes peeled for the calendar. Unsurprisingly, I saw this seasonal treat appear in all the usual high street shops. Time and time again I took the box in my hands, smiling with the anticipation of its inevitable purchase, before replacing it on the shelf to attend to more pressing matters.
Well, you can predict the outcome, especially if you are one of the, by my estimate, 43 million people also wanting to buy this particular Lego set. I waited too long. Stocks evaporated. And now it seems my only hope to obtain my dream Advent calendar is to pay twice the retail price, or to get lucky on eBay. The worst, most gut-wrenching part of this is that I actually predicted it would happen. As soon as I saw that there was a Star Wars Lego Advent calendar, I knew it would be popular - how could it not be? And when I saw that it included a Yoda figure wearing a Santa Claus suit, well, that should have been a big enough sign to convince me to go out and buy one in October.
Of course, this isn't the first product to be in short supply around this time of year. Ever since the Mr Potato Head toy was released in 1952, there has been a tradition of a handful of products being under heavy demand for Christmas. Naturally, toys are the most voraciously sought after, with Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmo dolls being notorious for causing actual fights in the aisles. Videogame consoles have also featured in their fair share of Christmas shopping battles, with both the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360 being hastily snapped up, only to be sold on eBay hours later at up to ten times cost price. This ridiculous, Christmas consumer madness is portrayed, without a hint of irony, in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Jingle All the Way, an appropriately mad, consumerist movie.
So here I sit, desperately hunting my white whale, whilst it hides in a perfect storm of public demand and product marketing. I have scoured the internet, visiting sites that look like they were set up yesterday specifically to capture foolish bounty hunters like myself, all to no avail. I suppose I could ask my friend in America to pick one up and mail it to me, but now it would arrive too late. Or I could bite the bullet and pay through the nose to secure one from a wily Internet scalper. Or, what is most likely, I will accept my mistake, console myself with a chocolate filled Advent calendar instead, and wait for next year.
And so let me finish by just reiterating my opening sentiment. If there is something that you know you need to buy for Christmas, no matter how certain you are that stocks will last, I urge you to strongly consider grabbing it while you can. You have been warned.