The toy industry discovered people will buy anything if it's cheap and looks good on camera. Squishy toys are everywhere now. They cost nothing. They do nothing. Perfect.
Social media turned rubber foam into an asset class. Kids film themselves squishing tiny polyurethane blobs for seven seconds. The video gets four million views. Their parents drive to five different stores looking for the purple octopus. This is what economists call price discovery.
The toys have no function. You squeeze them. They return to their original shape. That's the entire value proposition. No batteries. No assembly. No educational component whatsoever. Just chromatic stress balls marketed to people who can't reach the pedals in a car yet.
Some retail trader somewhere is building a DCF model for squishy toy manufacturers right now. He's forecasting revenue growth based on TikTok engagement rates. He's calculated the total addressable market by multiplying every child on earth by $3.99. He's typing "asymmetric upside" into a Discord channel at 2am.
The best part? These things cost maybe eleven cents to manufacture. You inject foam into a mold shaped like a cat or a dinosaur or whatever the f*ck. You paint it. You ship it. The gross margin makes pharmaceutical companies look charitable.
Low prices fuel the craze, according to people who've never seen a craze end. Parents buy twelve of them because they're cheaper than a babysitter. Kids lose interest in nine days. The toys end up in a landfill shaped like the optimism of everyone who thought this time would be different. The cycle repeats with the next colorful piece of garbage that photographs well.
Your kids are building a portfolio of depreciating foam assets and you're calling it a hobby.
Photo by Nguyen Bui on Unsplash
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