I feel like Build-A-Bear should stop making so many of the interesting bears online exclusives.
I see a lot of really cool designs but just ordering it straight to your door kind of ruins the magic/nostalgia of the moment? I don't know if anyone else noticed this or it's just my area, but I feel like there was a much wider array of bears in stores when I was a kid compared to now. Things feel almost a little repetitive without at least some kind of rotation, since they only really introduce a whole selection of new ones in stores for Halloween/Christmas (which to be fair, those are generally quite good).
I feel like there used to be a lot less collaborations, too. It's nice when they do get to do these crossovers, but the frequency of them (and being permanenelty in stores in a lot of cases, particularly Sanrio) makes them feel less special. They could always do a few seperate runs of the same stock or something, but having the "more marketable" ones take up the place of an original design that could be a kid's new favourite plush for life just feels unfortunate - having more option, is my point.
I actually went to the store near me with my friend semi-recently, and we had a hard time picking anything because there just wasn't a lot of option that we hadn't already seen. He got a cute one eventually that we found near the back of one of the baskets but I didn't end up getting one myself because none of them really spoke to me (that I didn't already have from years ago).
I know if some of the online exclusives had been there, choosing would've been a much easier time.
Also slightly irrelevant, but the downgrade of the Honey Girls designs is criminal 😭
Matter of fact, some of the summer collection was so confusing, one of them was a whole palm tree 😭??
Case in point, though, I feel like Build-A-Bear could be doing a little better in some of their locations if they tailored more like how they used to. A lot of adults going there usually do so for the nostalgia, and with how it's changed so much (at least in my area), it's just really not the same experience, especially if you want to revisit and they've barely added anything except more collaborations that you may or may not be interested in. Not to mention: they no longer print birth certificates, so really no point of those fun computers anymore, either! (I hope at least if they get rid of those then they might bring back the brushing station that was built to look like a bath. I really miss that.). I'm sure parents would like to give their kids the experience they had as a child, and sure, the kids don't know better, but it's just a shame that the same magic probably won't ever be replicated.
I don't actually have Twitter or most of the socials they'd be super frequent on for stuff like this, but part of me wonders if enough people complained about it then they might take some actual action. It's a nice thought, I'd love to see things improve.
If they added more option and improved their marketing to feel more personal (bring back Bearville Alive on a better scale!!), then I feel like things would get more popular anyway, and they wouldn't have to rely on collabs.
Just had to say that after the new releases, lol. Yk how it is, seeing a cool one and thinking about heading over and it's an online-only. Unfortunate.
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