From hours to days to not hatching at all, the hottest item for this year's holiday season Hatchimals caused customer service woes for parents.
Complaints of defective Hatchimals have flooded social media, with dozens of comments popping up on the Facebook page of the Canada-based company that makes the interactive toy, Spin Master since Christmas morning,
The interactive toy hatches from a plastic egg, but some parents stated on Twitter that it took hours for their kids' Hatchimals to hatch, and if they did, the batteries weren't lasting long.
Spin Master later released a statement to NBC10 Philadelphia apologizing for any defective toys and urged customers on Twitter to direct message the company for assistance or to contact its customer service number.
According to the toy maker, with toys that incorporate a high level of technology, there are also some cases where the product may not perform as expected, unfortunately.
Spin Master isn't the only company that has produced defective products. According to Chicago Tribune, it's just the most visible example of the challenges toy makers face when producing a complicated design, or ramping up production of a very popular product.
Britt Beemer, founder of America's Research Group said that it is part of the challenge of manufacturers facing.
'When you hit a grand slam, how many do you make? If they don't make enough they have a lot of unhappy people. If they make more and have a 1% failure rate, they have unhappy people," he said.
Beemer added that such situation puts toy makers in an awkward "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position. Meanwhile, Jim Silver, editor in chief of toy review site TTPM, estimates that Spin Master made some 2 million Hatchimals for the holidays.
According to Silver, just like smartphones or other electronic gadgets, the first production runs often contain the most bugs, and problems tend to get ironed out in future runs.
"On any electronic product, I generally don't want the first run" if I'm a consumer, Silver said. "When the hot new things come out, I wait three weeks." The toy Hatchimals retails for about $50 but sold for upward of $250 on eBay prior to the holidays.
