Every so often another ultra-expensive, mega-rare toy is announced, like Sony’s Aibo robot dog or the Pleo the robo-dinosaur. These fad-toys have brief, but explosive lives – gaining momentum and mass with PR hurricanes, only to disappear off the radar when the lucky few that were able to get them, very quickly forget about them. This leaves the unlucky and unconnected Aibo-less multitude just stewing in frustration! Argh!
Then David Pogue of the New York Times came up with the funny idea of creating a website where users would sign up to temporarily own a rare-toy, after which the next person on the list would buy the toy from you, and so on, and so on.
You buy the thing at full price. When you’re finished with it, maybe a couple of weeks later, the next guy buys it from you for 85 percent of the original price. Then he sells it to the third guy for 85 percent of that. And so on, until the last guy gets the hand-me-down Pleo for, say, $25. Everybody’s happy, and there’s not a bunch of closeted Pleos all over America.
An interesting concept for people that just want that rare toy. But what if we could expand on the idea and produce one-of-a-kind products that would never make it to market otherwise? Like combining an ideation site like Halfbakery.com with a user-generated start-up-cost/production portal. Then moving into Pogues’ owner/share site suggestion.
Convoluted, yes. But then you could get over that ultra-rare, pre-touched, already-slobbered-on product fantasy.
NYTimes - Pleo, the (Yawn) Dino-Robot. Next!
[via consumerist]
Better yet, after 10 people, the Pleos can be given to charities like NYCares who do holiday gift drives.
It’s a good idea *looks over at Furby, feels guilty*
January 25th, 2008 at 1:39 pm