12 (School) Days of Christmas: Fingerlings create stress for holiday shoppers

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Erin Fades, Staff Writer

With the holiday season in full swing, people are rushing to buy the perfect presents for their children. This year, the one present every child is begging for is, um, a tiny farting monkey.

Fingerlings are interactive robotic monkeys that respond to kids when they are touched or hear vocal cues. These noises include coos, giggles, snores, and even burps and farts.

Fingerlings are manufactured by a Canadian company called WowWee and retail for around $15. They can be found at any of the stores listed on their website, if they are in stock. Kids are obsessed with these cute robotic animals and they are flying off the shelves.

The Learning Express located in Pittsburgh’s Bakery Square, for example, received its first shipment of Fingerlings in August. Out of the 72 toys that were shipped to the store, 62 of them were already reserved for customers on the waiting list. The remaining ten were sold within the first 24 hours.

Parents have become so desperate that they have begun to turn to online bidding sites such as Ebay. The toys can be sold on these websites for up to a hundred dollars or more, which is obviously far overpriced.

Along with the original six monkeys, WowWee has created 2tone, Glitter, unicorn, and sloth Fingerlings as well. There are also three different playsets available for the Fingerlings to hang off of.

Fingerlings are one of the top toys on kids’ Christmas lists, but the product is so overhyped that it is making parents stress and spend money that they may not have. Christmas is not meant to be about buying the “It” toy for children. It should be, at its core, about peace, love, and family.