Hey guys, I don’t normally go on this board, but I had a question maybe some of you might be experts on.

I recently went to Walmart to check out some of the Star Wars legos out of nostalgia. I haven’t been to the Walmart toy aisle in a few years, and I noticed an explosion in terrible cheap collectible toys, just plastic wrapped in plastic moulded into some shape.

Surprise eggs, collectible cats wrapped in scented burritos, toys that come packaged in slime, very oddly specific collector series like Minecraft characters in carts.. not Minecraft characters, but ONLY Minecraft characters in carts. They’re all cheap plastic, and I’m assuming they prey on the “satisfaction” of getting a surprise, cracking an egg, scratching a scratch card, etc.. basically instead of just buying a quality toy they trap the kids into an endless loop of buying plastic I imagine.

Anyways, it absolutely blew my mind how much of this stuff is now on the shelves. And I was wondering what people here thought about it, and I was also especially wondering if anyone here knows if there’s a specific name for this phenomenon, because I’m very interested in reading more about it.