The fourth quarter of the year is the busiest time for retail shopping. As stores wind up for Christmas, shoppers flock to department stores, electronics dealers and even online toy stores like all aboard toys . Their mission is to find the best and most popular toys at the cheapest price possible.

Toy manufacturers, dealers, and stores are all coordinated to this seasonal cycle. They know they need to develop and introduce toys in order to prime parents to find them indispensable to their child’s happiness. Manufacturing, shipping, and stocking must be timed perfectly so that just enough of each toy arrives on the store shelves between October 1st and December 24th . Too few and they miss out on countless sales if they happen to have one of the “must have” toys of the year. If too many are sitting in stores or warehouses after December 25th, then they are forced to slash prices in hopes of selling them at all.

The media feeds into this idea that Christmas shopping = toy shopping. They start covering trends in the summer and early fall. Articles and blog posts will appear attempting to anticipate the list of what will be the year’s most popular toys . They claim it’s to help parents get ahead of the stampede so that they can ensure they get a toy before it runs out. More likely they are trying to prove their forecasting abilities. For media, toymakers, and stores alike, anticipating what toys will fly off the shelves during Christmas shopping is a critical gamble that most can’t afford to lose in these troubled economic times.