to think the Build A Bear situation is crazy

[OnNaturesCourse]

Today they have a 'pay your age' deal on and I have seen reports of people queuing for hours just to get a bear.

My reckoning is most of the kids will be 5/6 years old if not older so the savings will be roughly £10 a bear. Even going with 2 or so kids is queuing for hours really worth the savings!?

People seem to be going nuts for it, and build a bear really don't seem to have anticipated the craziness...

Do they have it in Germany. My dd is 13 months old. So would she pay 1£ or £13

@Bananalanacake your child is 1 so you would pay £1

£1 for anyone under 1.

I was going to take LO for their first bear but seen the queues and thought it wasn't worth it.

Its ridiculous, funny thing about it really is the fact this runs throughout the whole year, if you take your child on their birthday they pay their age.

And all the accessories for it costs an additional £50 so a bargain.

Surely pretty much anyone over 5 in England would have been in school today? Presuming the child needs to be present to claim? Also, while the bears may be cheap, the tat outfits and accessories are not. Bet most people buy a few bits.

Anything gimmicky like this makes me think there must be financial trouble looming and they’re trying to boost sales!

There was a post on Facebook from someone saying they queued 45 mins today for this and then got told they would be waiting “at least another 4 hours”

I agree it smacks of a company in financial trouble

It's ridiculous and I think heads will roll after this. A Build a Bear spokesman talked about "unprecedented" demand. It might have been unprecedented but surely not unpredictable! They pulled the offer early because of safety concerns and it's been the same here in the US and in Canada. The BBC was reporting a UK woman saying that she'd taken her 5 year old out of school for the day just to get the offer.

PR stunt that’s backfired. For all the happy customers there seem to be more that were turned away. Doubt they'll bother going again.

Reminds me of the Hoover competition in the 1990’s where free air tickets to the US were available with every Hoover purchase. Too many were sold and they couldn’t honour the deal. Major bad publicity.

It's not ridiculous. It's fun. God forbid anyone have any fun

It’s a genius marketing idea that worked too well. That coupled with the media attention means it was probably an amazing day for them financially.

A pregnant member of staff got assaulted in the Belfast store and police had to be called to a number of different stores to control the crowd as some people don’t seem to know how to behave all for the sake of a cheap teddy bear. Yeah, great fun Huha

I can't believe the hysteria. It's only a bear.

I don't think the huge demand was necessarily predictable, TBH. Increased demand was certainly predictable, of course, but some places had queues over a mile long. Some were talking about 8 hour queues. I don't think they could have predicted quite that response.

I heard someone on the radio whining about it- if you don't want to wait in the queue (lord knows I wouldn't), then don't! It's only a toy, for goodness sake. The world will not end if you don't get one. Someone else was shouting about "how can I tell a 4 year old they can't have a bear?". Pathetic really- you simply have to tell them that they can't have a bear, that you're sorry and then comfort them if they're upset. Not the nicest thing in the world, they might cry but they'll get over it quick enough if you don't make into a massive deal.

Reminiscent of the black friday scenes a while back, people act so strangely over things like this.

People were queuing at my local build a bear for 5 hours, they stopped people joining the que at 2pm to ensure there was enough stock for those already queuing. Bear in mind those aged 4+ were in school till approximately 3pm so majority will of sold for £3 or less.

It's absolute madness the bears aren't that good

I only heard about it this morning. Dd in school and we were in work. Nearest store is at least 30 min drive so just ignored it. They have now offered all club members a voucher for £12 off a bear. It is valid well I to August so dd may get to go in the holidays. We go to one at a designer outlet village, that we will be stopping at when we go on holiday. I have messaged to ask if it can be used there. They are expecting most children to want to get accessories and the parent take the attitude that as the bead was free they can spend a bit more on clothes.

Those of you who didn’t get it, there’s a voucher £12 off on your build a bear online account. Just screenshot it and take with you to the shop. And it’s valid until the end of August.

I feel so sorry for the staff (probably on minimum wage as well) it must have been the most hellish shift ever!

I just don't understand why parents were still choosing to join the queues when it was obvious they would be waiting hours. With toddlers as well. Crazy.

Totally agree bobsandvagene

I went, and I paid £18 for £96 worth of toys. I can't afford to pay that much usually, so was quite happy to queue and get our bargains. My daughter collects the ponies, and my son's are so happy with their bears. They had fun playing with the other children in there, no one was moaning or whinging, and I had a good chat with the Mum behind me. All in all it was a successful morning here.

My local news site posted a video of the queue outside our local store. I stopped counting after 20, but there were plenty of over 5's in the queue. And all the savvy early risers will have snapped up the expensive bears, so they were probably queuing all day to get an £18 bear for £9. That their child probably didn't even want in the first place. Great deal.

Some kind of temporary insanity takes hold with these things. It doesn't matter what the bargain is, it only matters THAT I GET ONE.

I think it's really silly to sell the same bear to two different children but charge one £3 and the other in another family £8 just because of their ages.

Thankyou for the heads up on £12 voucher will be using that in a couple of weeks :)
Crazy those ques etc though, I was debating going after school then was relieved when i heard it was closed and i didnt try to attempt it x

It was ridiculous, I went early hoping to get a nice bear but the queues were already 6- 7 hours long! I decided I couldn't put my child through waiting in a hot stuffy shopping centre for 7 hours just for a discounted bear so we got some cheap outdoor toys from the shop next door instead and went and had a picnic on the park with his cousins.
Really hope it was worth it for those that stayed in those queues