The story of 2017’s hot toy
How the Montreal-based company’s Fingerling caught on (robot grip and all)
About two years ago, Sydney Wiseman had a challenging assignment for an engineer at her family toy company.
Could he design a small robotic toy that resembled a pygmy marmoset, a tiny Amazonian monkey that Wiseman had been obsessed with since she was a child growing up in Montreal.
Sure, the engineer told her. What do you want the little monkey to do?
Thus was born the Fingerling, a five-inch monkey that grips your finger with its legs and arms, as it babbles, blows kisses and blinks its eyes. Cradle a Fingerling in your hand and it drifts off to sleep. Press the Fingerling’s head and it passes gas.
Created by the Montreal-based company WowWee, the Fingerling has been anointed one of this year’s hot toys for the holidays, a designation most toymakers only dream of achieving.
How the Fingerling reached this tipping point — when suddenly millions of children cannot do without a $15 farting monkey — is the story of a promising idea’s going viral on social media, a large retailer’s savvy pricing strategy and the science of managing scarcity.
The monkey’s journey from Wiseman’s imagination to holiday sensation also shows how the making of a hot toy has evolved through the generations.
The average lifespan of a toy fad is about eight months from its launch until it’s marked down, said Richard Gottlieb, an analyst and publisher of Global Toy News.
“The life of an item is a little rockier” than it used to be, said Anne Marie Kehoe, the Walmart vice-president who runs the retailer’s toy division in the United States. “We move as a country faster from one thing to the next.”
Cultivating the success of a hot toy carries its own risks, including managing supply. This past week, Fingerlings were out of stock on Walmart’s website, while parents complained that they had been snookered into buying counterfeits from sellers on Amazon and other sites. While the monkeys are the core of the Fingerlings brand, WowWee also sells sloth and unicorn versions — one of which was listed on eBay for $5,000.
Birth of a Blockbuster
One bitter cold morning last month, Wiseman scrolled through her phone in the WowWee offices in a former industrial building on Rue Saint-Patrick in Montreal.
She pulled up the picture of a wild pygmy marmoset that launched the idea for the Fingerlings.
“Bringing animals to life is something that is in our DNA,” said Wiseman, who, ebullient and energetic, sounds as if she is about to burst into joyous laughter at any moment.
The first prototype looked like a primordial creature that had crawled out of the jungle. “It was a little scary,” recalled Davin Sufer, the company’s chief technology officer.
A Fingerling can snore, say hello and babble in monkey gibberish. If one Fingerling starts singing, it triggers sensors in nearby Fingerling monkeys.
Wiseman and her team came up with the name Fingerling — not Finger monkey — so the brand could produce other miniature animals. Kehoe, Walmart’s highranking toy executive, knew right away that the Fingerling would be a hit.
“This monkey creates an emotional connection right in front of your face,” Kehoe said in an interview this month.
Walmart was sold almost instantly on the toy’s appeal, but the price was a problem.
WowWee had originally planned on selling the Fingerling for $20, but the giant retailer was insistent: About $15 was the magic number. Drop $5 from the price and Walmart would buy 10 times more Fingerlings.
Back in Montreal, the WowWee executives debated the price cut; it would mean sacrificing significant profit on each monkey.
Wiseman pleaded with the team. In the past, WowWee had stood firm on keeping a higher price, only to mark down the toys later when they didn’t sell.
“I said, ‘I am telling you, I don’t want to fight this,’” Wiseman recalled.
“They are saying it for a reason. They know.” The price was set at roughly $15. Not long after the social media push in August, the monkeys were basically sold out everywhere, and WowWee was able to pull back on its marketing.
“It’s a wonderful problem when your demand outstrips supply,” said Gottlieb, the toy analyst.