I’ve been saying this all along. They’re milking the frog hype and ultimately giving us quantity over quality, but they know it doesn’t matter the quality, the frogs will sell. And the whole Disney stitch thing is a bit much. I have one from last year around this time and it wasn’t the softest thing and I feel like every design they’ve done of him is super simple and could EASILY be much better and unique. But, again, they don’t care because they know that they will sell since stitch is a favorite of many. As for the clothing, sometimes I see that the material is extremely cheap to the point where I don’t even want to use the item, but I do because it’s expensive. Comparing my clothes from the 2000s to the clothes we are currently getting, it’s sad to see the decline in quality. Quality of bears is commonly talked about, but as somebody who has a major BABW clothing addiction, I feel the need to bring this up.
I’ve been sent wrong items and have had missing items when ordering from build a bear almost every single time in the past couple of years. It’s frustrating because the closest location is 40 minutes away and build a bear isn’t the greatest and takes forever. I have never received so many incorrect / incomplete orders from any other store before.
The newest hello kitty pjs were the biggest let down for me of all time. They’re not even soft they’re just the most thin rip off ever. I hate that I own them also that I refuse to use them they just sit on a hanger.
Yes that was my thoughts exactly — I now own three sets of pjs with this type of cheap material. Disappointing since my old hello kitty pjs are so nice.
The clothing fabric, material, and complexity has gone WAY down. I absolutely agree. The clothing I have from the 2000s is sooooo much nicer in every way.
to add onto this: I definitely think the main selling point of BaB right now is 1. customization, everyone loves to have a part in making something and feel more connected to it, it's almost like sewing it yourself but less work. 2. branding, with all the crossovers and feom what I've noticed *especially* pokémon, more people are drawn in and want to collect it because theyre familiar with the media its from without even caring about the jacked up prices or quality.
100% agree. Like so many other companies, they are pushing the limits to see how much we’ll take. Everything seems to be about endless profit increase, sadly.
I did just order Devil Bear, but after this purchase and the upcoming Cinnamoroll, I’ll be done with new BABs. The quality has taken a very noticeable downturn, and with all the quality plushie companies in the world, there’s little incentive to continue purchasing.
Also, they really need to fix their website.
>it feels like BaBW as a company just knows that they can do the bare minimum and still have everything sell just for the brand.
yeah, thats capitalism, baby. all company's will do this if they can, and bab knows it can.
I liked the one (1) frog before but never wanted to buy it. Never understood why people want all these variants of it. It's Froggy Chair all over again... But this is worse.
I haven't bought from BAB for some time and not sure what you mean about quality drops. I only just bought the Devil bear recently and it's in good shape. But you say there's been multiple posts about bears with defects... :(
honestly just going into any local BaB you could probably see the quality in the skins, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack of skins to find one with no defects of any kind. hence why theres alot of posts of people showing the defects they didn't notice at first.
exactly. i literally so badly wanted to quit my job and work at BaB but it's just so much less pay and my current job has some benefits. It sucks because I genuinely enjoy most aspects of working at BaBW but it just isn't worth the mental strain and general waste of my time and gas money.
Absolutely this, the price is exorbitant for what you get of late. I got the bee for Christmas, it was $55 for him and one shirt (of which the quality is also sus, but I digress). When I picked him up for the first time it was like touching a $10 Walmart plush or a carnival prize. The fur is very soft but extremely thin, and the stuffing was atrocious (but maybe that's a Canada thing because they ship from a warehouse rather than a store). He was also covered in those crunchy little remnants of fur from the cutting/sewing process which was off-putting. Definitely my last purchase new/direct from BAB for the foreseeable future; there's no appeal left there that I couldn't find in a similar, less expensive plush. 🤷♀️
Yeah, for sure. i love build a bears, but i don't like build a bear workshop. i love my possum, but i don't love how shitty the fabric on my rabbit is. theyre slowly getting worse and worse
completely agree! even the frogs are getting smaller! i have a spring green and pink frog and the jolly jumps frog and they are getting slightly smaller each version. i really do love the frogs but if I'm paying more, i think the quality should go up
I absolutely agree — my oldest bear is perfect quality. And has definitely held up over time. I got my one of my 25th celebration bears with a hole in the face (BABW did replace so that was At least something) My devil bear arrived today with a ripped seam ( i was able to fix it but should I have too — um no). I know it will be a while before I can visit a store so it was just easier to fix it myself. I still love my devil bear and am overall happy with him but it means I will be taking a break from them at least for a while. Then there are the three or 4 bears that I had bought probably 2 to 3 ish years ago that looked nothing like the pics on the website — very wonky indeed. Those wonky bears made me stay off the BAB site and I purchased very little since then until the vault bears came out. I will say all of those that I bought were really great. Those appear to be better quality than I think a lot of what they come out with on the regular. I plan on taking a break from BAB now that I have all the vault animals that I want and the Valentine’s devil and monkey (Haven’t gotten the monkey yet so I hope he‘s decent quality But I wont be surprised if hes not). And yes BABW seems to frequently put out new plushies that really are just a different color and such with very little thought behind them. Which is too bad. I also wish the quality was better — Better fabric, better design would be nice. I love BAB but for the prices I wish the quality was how it used to be like when I got my first one.
I LOVED the four legged dogs as a kid, I still have my husky with his little red sweater as well, and I might have my black lab stored somewhere in the attic...
That's my greatest regret! I never knew they had a beagle, but if I did I probably would have gotten one as a kid! I've got a beagle of my own and I love her to death, and we had a beagle before her as well <3
I think its a brand that's falling victim to the scalper market
Put out so much of a product and let it be scalped instantly for 500% of what its worth
Since its selling instantly to scalpers they can literally put out crap and sell it
Its becoming the new funko pop
The instore experience is mostly gone, they used to have a ton of stuff to play with, pages to color for kids, boxes to color, that's all gone in the stores, now you go in, stuff the bear and then leave. Its only mildly fun for children now. It used to be way better.
The website mostly doesn't work for online orders. I had an order that just got wiped completely out and never even showed up even though it said it went through.
Does anyone know if you can still get a birth certificate printed if you have the barcode from the toy? I heard they are wiping out the whole ID bear system and discontinued the find a bear program permanently.
I am also sad to see the company go this way, this company essentially taught me how to sew, because I kind of re-learned how to sew fixing up bears at home, I was able to start embroidering. Because a friend of mine gave me an idea, to keep a very long story short, I started embroidering a lot of shirts for friends of mine. Because of this my friends got some very nice gifts and I impressed a lot of people.
I don't know, that is what people are saying on here. A lot of people said the hospital is closed. Some people said their stores have lost bears that they are unable to return to the owners.
yes, it's really upsetting bc they didn't even tell us! we found out bc someone brought in a lost bear and corporate said find a bear was discontinued years ago!!!
From what I’ve seen it isn’t a recent thing. Build a bear’s a huge corporation that overcharges for the clothes and will get away with making the cheapest products possible. Maybe the changes have ramped up recently though, there are a lot of people on this Reddit who watch much more closely than me. Making a billion frogs is a cash grab, sure, but I do think they’re pretty adorable and anytime ive gone into build a bear since childhood there have been at least a few bears that I thought looked dumb or hard to cuddle with. I still like build a bears a lot though. I think it’s the little process of stuffing the animals and naming them and the mix of what i love abt stuffed animals and what appeals to me abt fashion dolls
I can definitely imagine prices having increased drastically. I wasn’t paying that much attention to that as a kid. I do know there’s always been some variation in quality, as I have one bear from 2009 that’s leagues softer than one from 2010 (I’m very sure it’s fabric differences not wear and tear)
Agreed it’s the stuffing of the animal and choosing outfits and such. That’s is a big appeal to me as well. I’ve saved a few skins for that exact reason — to have the experienc.
From their NFT collection it became clear to me that Build A Bear is the type of company that will stoop to these low levels just to get some extra cash, even when they're already one of the biggest companies in the toy market. They really can't be anymore blatant about the fact that they want money when they feel completely okay with releasing cryptocurrency scams as a company that specializes in selling toys to children.
Totally agree. I have a well loved 2022 werewolf BAB. Shes gone to 4 countries with me and I constantly change her clothes take her everywhere etc. I’ve had her since August and her furs already matting even though I consistently brush it. Meanwhile I find bears from 2000 that look brand spanking new lol
if they were looking to improve quality, i wouldnt mind it AS much. but when it comes to the harry potter stuff still being made(and being cheap rip offs of what already exists, just blue like the otter), or the quality issue and mixing it all together with fedex's lazy, bad attitude towards shipping, it makes it all not worth it anymore.
i am glad to finally be done with the eeveelutions and be able to wait for my favorite pokemon, chimchar. once that happens ill probably just be done cause at this point it aint worth it. i even managed to order one of my harder to find for cheap bears, original zombear for 50 bucks and couldnt pass that up. it's either bad quality making me not wanna bother or resellers not understanding how money works and judging us for not wanting to over spend for a plush
there is also the issue of axolotl and frogs as well. i'm fine with them milking a design(glad they may be done with stitch), but since there's infinite possibilitys for the axolotls and frogs being just colors rather than holidays, you know theyre gonna milk that bone dry. i'm looking forward to see if they do anything unique like the rainbow frogs, but annoyed we're gonna have just those to consistently look forward to. the only frogs i'm looking forward to atm are maybe jumbo rainbow frog and mini rainbow frog, and thats it. the others dont interest me at all tbh and just feel pointlessly pumped up in comparison to the spring frogs. though i do want to get all the axolotls. those i dont mind as much as the minis make it managable and look better in comparison
I mean,to be fair they aren’t forcing anyone to purchase from them. I can fully see why they do many repeats & different versions of popular bears. Even tho the company is geared more for children, its the adults who actually have the money to spend, whereas the average kid most likely gets to visit 2 times a year if they are lucky. Especially when prices continue to rise.
Pretty much. Unfortunately it’s a case of too many people would rather support because cute animals then actually see what the company is doing…
I really like the demon bear but I haven’t supported them in over a year after they messed up my $140 order, and yes I got refunded but there’s NO excuse on adding 4 Birth certificates and only putting one random bear that wasn’t even ordered. I just- have way to much anxiety to be waiting 14+ days on FedEx (yet pay $10+ for 4-6 days) to risk getting a bad quality or the completely wrong bear for the price :(
I love seeing other peoples collections though
i feel you, anxiety with shipping is so bad for me because i usually try to order my BaBs secondhand and used to use Mercari but my local post office declined every single package only from there, all my online ones like knuckles came just fine thank goodness but i really hate wanting to buy newer ones or restocks because they just don't listen to the customers.
I completely agree! Perhaps I’m a little bias (and angry) because one of my all time favorite characters was hinted to becoming a build a bear. AKA the Niffler from Fantastic Beasts and where to find them—the spin off for Harry Potter. So of course I want to purchase the damn thing and all of the accessories but I can’t justify the cost of it all.
When I do finally have enough money aside I see that they’re all sold out. I call all the build a bears in my state to see if there is just one left but there’s none except the lil side plushes.
I email customer service and apparently they were discontinued because of a faulty knee. They consider their quality of the product unfair and decided to take them off and claimed that they will return. It’s been about a year now, still nothing. I was really disappointed at the fact that a highly anticipated BAB would Just suddenly become discontinued like that. And at the price point you’d think it would be good quality.
Jokes on them because I managed to get the entire collection for only $40+ shipping. And it came unstuffed. Unlike the nearly $70+ bundle deal they had going on for everyone.
I remember this! I tried to get just the Niffler but they were sold out and every one I looked for secondhand was inflated to like 50-70 bucks which is just painful..
So I agree that they are taking advantage of us but for completely different reasons than what you mentioned.
The flaws and factory errors can be dealt with simply by going into a local build a bear and hand picking your own bear and checking for flaws in advance as well as telling the workers if u want the bear to be stuffed more firmly or less firmly for better cuddling. There are so many build a bear workshops in the U.S. If you don't reasonably live close to one, that's just unfortunate & idk what to tell ya.
The way in which I think they're ripping us off/taking advantage of us is that they intentionally make certain bears look ugly without clothes/accessories in order to force us to want to buy clothing/accessories. The Hello Kitty and Powerpuff girls BAB's are a perfect example. They have that ugly undershirt looking thing sewn onto their bodies. I understand it for the Powerpuff girls since they're humans and it would be weird for them to just make them plain naked or just skin and nothing else, but hello kitty is a freaking cat. Why would they need to give it an undershirt for any reason other than to sell the accessories? I think they may also subtly do it for other bears that don't have undershirts. Like there's some bears that just have rly weird proportions or body shapes that make you want to just cover them up with clothes. You know? It could be just coincidental though.
I also think it's rly dumb that BAB's don't have zippers so we can adjust the stuffing or swap out scents. There are only 2 reasons they don't have zippers: 1: Dumb kids can choke on the stuffing or zipper if it falls off or 2: They want us to have to come into a store to make adjustments to our bears. By having us come into the store, we're more likely to be tempted into buying more bears and accessories.
Now I did want to bring up the Pokemon argument. I think they've been pretty diverse with the Pokemon they've been selling. The only repeat designs are the male and female sparkly 25th anniversary Pikachus and I think Eevee had some details changed about it (like its eyes or something) but I don't think it was marketed as a new Eevee or anything (I rly want a female Eevee tho. Maybe even sparkly). There are Pokemon BAB's I strongly dislike/will never get (mainly Psyduck, Snubbull, & Meowth) and there are Pokemon that I rly wish they would restock or make if they don't already exist (Piplup, Kantonian Vulpix, Galarian Ponyta, Oshawott, Chikorita, Flygon, Shiny Pokemon & more), but the one thing about Pokemon BAB's that I think is a huge ripoff/scam is the fact that u are forced to buy the bundles online. The workaround for this is that u can sell the unwanted accessories in your local build a bear, but again, some people don't have access to that. Also, if u want a scent put into a Pokemon BAB (or any build a bear that u didn't buy in person), you're forced to buy an unstuffed bear in order to get a scent and then sell the bear if u don't need it. That's what confuses me. So many people would be willing to buy tons of scent disks. Instead of pumping out new BAB designs, they should just make a fck ton of scent disks and allow ppl to buy as many of them as they want without requiring them to buy a bear with it. They could make so much money that way and it wouldn't be too hard on people's wallets since they're just scents.
Anyways, regarding other repeat bears, I just say don't buy them if you don't want/need them. If a better version of one u have comes out and u wish u had waited to get the better version (like sparkly 25th anniversary Toothless over regular scaly generic Toothless), just sell your old one on eBay and put the money towards the new one. As a repeat bear, I personally think Glisten is cool tho. It's like a cute lil Christmas tradition and I'm always excited to see the new ones even if I don't end up getting them.
I mean, when you expand your SKU’s to include licensed products there’s gonna be a quality loss imo. People aren’t as interested in a basic bear these days. They want something they know and recognize.
I’ve been saying this all along. They’re milking the frog hype and ultimately giving us quantity over quality, but they know it doesn’t matter the quality, the frogs will sell. And the whole Disney stitch thing is a bit much. I have one from last year around this time and it wasn’t the softest thing and I feel like every design they’ve done of him is super simple and could EASILY be much better and unique. But, again, they don’t care because they know that they will sell since stitch is a favorite of many. As for the clothing, sometimes I see that the material is extremely cheap to the point where I don’t even want to use the item, but I do because it’s expensive. Comparing my clothes from the 2000s to the clothes we are currently getting, it’s sad to see the decline in quality. Quality of bears is commonly talked about, but as somebody who has a major BABW clothing addiction, I feel the need to bring this up. I’ve been sent wrong items and have had missing items when ordering from build a bear almost every single time in the past couple of years. It’s frustrating because the closest location is 40 minutes away and build a bear isn’t the greatest and takes forever. I have never received so many incorrect / incomplete orders from any other store before.
The newest hello kitty pjs were the biggest let down for me of all time. They’re not even soft they’re just the most thin rip off ever. I hate that I own them also that I refuse to use them they just sit on a hanger.
Yes that was my thoughts exactly — I now own three sets of pjs with this type of cheap material. Disappointing since my old hello kitty pjs are so nice.
Yup I collect a lot of the clothing as well and yeah a lot of the fabric used for that is terrible.
The clothing fabric, material, and complexity has gone WAY down. I absolutely agree. The clothing I have from the 2000s is sooooo much nicer in every way.
I’ve stopped buying from them and turned to collecting older bears. I’m much happier with the quality, and they’re pretty cheap.
I have recently been doing the same and all of my bears have been nice others than needing a good washing and so forth its been a positive experience.
to add onto this: I definitely think the main selling point of BaB right now is 1. customization, everyone loves to have a part in making something and feel more connected to it, it's almost like sewing it yourself but less work. 2. branding, with all the crossovers and feom what I've noticed *especially* pokémon, more people are drawn in and want to collect it because theyre familiar with the media its from without even caring about the jacked up prices or quality.
100% agree. Like so many other companies, they are pushing the limits to see how much we’ll take. Everything seems to be about endless profit increase, sadly. I did just order Devil Bear, but after this purchase and the upcoming Cinnamoroll, I’ll be done with new BABs. The quality has taken a very noticeable downturn, and with all the quality plushie companies in the world, there’s little incentive to continue purchasing. Also, they really need to fix their website.
>it feels like BaBW as a company just knows that they can do the bare minimum and still have everything sell just for the brand. yeah, thats capitalism, baby. all company's will do this if they can, and bab knows it can.
I liked the one (1) frog before but never wanted to buy it. Never understood why people want all these variants of it. It's Froggy Chair all over again... But this is worse. I haven't bought from BAB for some time and not sure what you mean about quality drops. I only just bought the Devil bear recently and it's in good shape. But you say there's been multiple posts about bears with defects... :(
honestly just going into any local BaB you could probably see the quality in the skins, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack of skins to find one with no defects of any kind. hence why theres alot of posts of people showing the defects they didn't notice at first.
Not to mention they severely underpay their staff while at the same time having ridiculous standards for their employees. Classic capitalism
exactly. i literally so badly wanted to quit my job and work at BaB but it's just so much less pay and my current job has some benefits. It sucks because I genuinely enjoy most aspects of working at BaBW but it just isn't worth the mental strain and general waste of my time and gas money.
Absolutely this, the price is exorbitant for what you get of late. I got the bee for Christmas, it was $55 for him and one shirt (of which the quality is also sus, but I digress). When I picked him up for the first time it was like touching a $10 Walmart plush or a carnival prize. The fur is very soft but extremely thin, and the stuffing was atrocious (but maybe that's a Canada thing because they ship from a warehouse rather than a store). He was also covered in those crunchy little remnants of fur from the cutting/sewing process which was off-putting. Definitely my last purchase new/direct from BAB for the foreseeable future; there's no appeal left there that I couldn't find in a similar, less expensive plush. 🤷♀️
Yeah, for sure. i love build a bears, but i don't like build a bear workshop. i love my possum, but i don't love how shitty the fabric on my rabbit is. theyre slowly getting worse and worse
completely agree! even the frogs are getting smaller! i have a spring green and pink frog and the jolly jumps frog and they are getting slightly smaller each version. i really do love the frogs but if I'm paying more, i think the quality should go up
soon enough the frog buddies are gonna be the standard 💀
My new pink tie dye frog is actually bigger than my regular pink frog. Honestly all of them are the same size but the pink
I absolutely agree — my oldest bear is perfect quality. And has definitely held up over time. I got my one of my 25th celebration bears with a hole in the face (BABW did replace so that was At least something) My devil bear arrived today with a ripped seam ( i was able to fix it but should I have too — um no). I know it will be a while before I can visit a store so it was just easier to fix it myself. I still love my devil bear and am overall happy with him but it means I will be taking a break from them at least for a while. Then there are the three or 4 bears that I had bought probably 2 to 3 ish years ago that looked nothing like the pics on the website — very wonky indeed. Those wonky bears made me stay off the BAB site and I purchased very little since then until the vault bears came out. I will say all of those that I bought were really great. Those appear to be better quality than I think a lot of what they come out with on the regular. I plan on taking a break from BAB now that I have all the vault animals that I want and the Valentine’s devil and monkey (Haven’t gotten the monkey yet so I hope he‘s decent quality But I wont be surprised if hes not). And yes BABW seems to frequently put out new plushies that really are just a different color and such with very little thought behind them. Which is too bad. I also wish the quality was better — Better fabric, better design would be nice. I love BAB but for the prices I wish the quality was how it used to be like when I got my first one.
I'd love to have more dogs and cats, they were my favorite. I still love my first BaB, Nash. He's a husky. And I took him EVERYWHERE. Got him in 2007.
I LOVED the four legged dogs as a kid, I still have my husky with his little red sweater as well, and I might have my black lab stored somewhere in the attic...
There were so many cute one's!! I remember the little pups they'd have as well! Oh, the black lab is so cute!! I wish I knew where my beagle went.
That's my greatest regret! I never knew they had a beagle, but if I did I probably would have gotten one as a kid! I've got a beagle of my own and I love her to death, and we had a beagle before her as well <3
i'll say this probably forever and always. Build a bear was amazing until Maxine retired. 🥲
I think its a brand that's falling victim to the scalper market Put out so much of a product and let it be scalped instantly for 500% of what its worth Since its selling instantly to scalpers they can literally put out crap and sell it Its becoming the new funko pop The instore experience is mostly gone, they used to have a ton of stuff to play with, pages to color for kids, boxes to color, that's all gone in the stores, now you go in, stuff the bear and then leave. Its only mildly fun for children now. It used to be way better. The website mostly doesn't work for online orders. I had an order that just got wiped completely out and never even showed up even though it said it went through. Does anyone know if you can still get a birth certificate printed if you have the barcode from the toy? I heard they are wiping out the whole ID bear system and discontinued the find a bear program permanently. I am also sad to see the company go this way, this company essentially taught me how to sew, because I kind of re-learned how to sew fixing up bears at home, I was able to start embroidering. Because a friend of mine gave me an idea, to keep a very long story short, I started embroidering a lot of shirts for friends of mine. Because of this my friends got some very nice gifts and I impressed a lot of people.
The really discontinued the finding a BAB? Especially knowing people can misplace things, even treasured items?
I don't know, that is what people are saying on here. A lot of people said the hospital is closed. Some people said their stores have lost bears that they are unable to return to the owners.
yes, it's really upsetting bc they didn't even tell us! we found out bc someone brought in a lost bear and corporate said find a bear was discontinued years ago!!!
From what I’ve seen it isn’t a recent thing. Build a bear’s a huge corporation that overcharges for the clothes and will get away with making the cheapest products possible. Maybe the changes have ramped up recently though, there are a lot of people on this Reddit who watch much more closely than me. Making a billion frogs is a cash grab, sure, but I do think they’re pretty adorable and anytime ive gone into build a bear since childhood there have been at least a few bears that I thought looked dumb or hard to cuddle with. I still like build a bears a lot though. I think it’s the little process of stuffing the animals and naming them and the mix of what i love abt stuffed animals and what appeals to me abt fashion dolls
I can definitely imagine prices having increased drastically. I wasn’t paying that much attention to that as a kid. I do know there’s always been some variation in quality, as I have one bear from 2009 that’s leagues softer than one from 2010 (I’m very sure it’s fabric differences not wear and tear)
Agreed it’s the stuffing of the animal and choosing outfits and such. That’s is a big appeal to me as well. I’ve saved a few skins for that exact reason — to have the experienc.
I 100% agree
From their NFT collection it became clear to me that Build A Bear is the type of company that will stoop to these low levels just to get some extra cash, even when they're already one of the biggest companies in the toy market. They really can't be anymore blatant about the fact that they want money when they feel completely okay with releasing cryptocurrency scams as a company that specializes in selling toys to children.
Couldn’t agree more
my christmas frog seemed way lower quality than my green and pink frog :(
Totally agree. I have a well loved 2022 werewolf BAB. Shes gone to 4 countries with me and I constantly change her clothes take her everywhere etc. I’ve had her since August and her furs already matting even though I consistently brush it. Meanwhile I find bears from 2000 that look brand spanking new lol
ok but are we just complaining into the air or are we emailing and contacting build a bear to make this change?
if they were looking to improve quality, i wouldnt mind it AS much. but when it comes to the harry potter stuff still being made(and being cheap rip offs of what already exists, just blue like the otter), or the quality issue and mixing it all together with fedex's lazy, bad attitude towards shipping, it makes it all not worth it anymore. i am glad to finally be done with the eeveelutions and be able to wait for my favorite pokemon, chimchar. once that happens ill probably just be done cause at this point it aint worth it. i even managed to order one of my harder to find for cheap bears, original zombear for 50 bucks and couldnt pass that up. it's either bad quality making me not wanna bother or resellers not understanding how money works and judging us for not wanting to over spend for a plush there is also the issue of axolotl and frogs as well. i'm fine with them milking a design(glad they may be done with stitch), but since there's infinite possibilitys for the axolotls and frogs being just colors rather than holidays, you know theyre gonna milk that bone dry. i'm looking forward to see if they do anything unique like the rainbow frogs, but annoyed we're gonna have just those to consistently look forward to. the only frogs i'm looking forward to atm are maybe jumbo rainbow frog and mini rainbow frog, and thats it. the others dont interest me at all tbh and just feel pointlessly pumped up in comparison to the spring frogs. though i do want to get all the axolotls. those i dont mind as much as the minis make it managable and look better in comparison
I mean,to be fair they aren’t forcing anyone to purchase from them. I can fully see why they do many repeats & different versions of popular bears. Even tho the company is geared more for children, its the adults who actually have the money to spend, whereas the average kid most likely gets to visit 2 times a year if they are lucky. Especially when prices continue to rise.
Pretty much. Unfortunately it’s a case of too many people would rather support because cute animals then actually see what the company is doing… I really like the demon bear but I haven’t supported them in over a year after they messed up my $140 order, and yes I got refunded but there’s NO excuse on adding 4 Birth certificates and only putting one random bear that wasn’t even ordered. I just- have way to much anxiety to be waiting 14+ days on FedEx (yet pay $10+ for 4-6 days) to risk getting a bad quality or the completely wrong bear for the price :( I love seeing other peoples collections though
i feel you, anxiety with shipping is so bad for me because i usually try to order my BaBs secondhand and used to use Mercari but my local post office declined every single package only from there, all my online ones like knuckles came just fine thank goodness but i really hate wanting to buy newer ones or restocks because they just don't listen to the customers.
I completely agree! Perhaps I’m a little bias (and angry) because one of my all time favorite characters was hinted to becoming a build a bear. AKA the Niffler from Fantastic Beasts and where to find them—the spin off for Harry Potter. So of course I want to purchase the damn thing and all of the accessories but I can’t justify the cost of it all. When I do finally have enough money aside I see that they’re all sold out. I call all the build a bears in my state to see if there is just one left but there’s none except the lil side plushes. I email customer service and apparently they were discontinued because of a faulty knee. They consider their quality of the product unfair and decided to take them off and claimed that they will return. It’s been about a year now, still nothing. I was really disappointed at the fact that a highly anticipated BAB would Just suddenly become discontinued like that. And at the price point you’d think it would be good quality. Jokes on them because I managed to get the entire collection for only $40+ shipping. And it came unstuffed. Unlike the nearly $70+ bundle deal they had going on for everyone.
I remember this! I tried to get just the Niffler but they were sold out and every one I looked for secondhand was inflated to like 50-70 bucks which is just painful..
So I agree that they are taking advantage of us but for completely different reasons than what you mentioned. The flaws and factory errors can be dealt with simply by going into a local build a bear and hand picking your own bear and checking for flaws in advance as well as telling the workers if u want the bear to be stuffed more firmly or less firmly for better cuddling. There are so many build a bear workshops in the U.S. If you don't reasonably live close to one, that's just unfortunate & idk what to tell ya. The way in which I think they're ripping us off/taking advantage of us is that they intentionally make certain bears look ugly without clothes/accessories in order to force us to want to buy clothing/accessories. The Hello Kitty and Powerpuff girls BAB's are a perfect example. They have that ugly undershirt looking thing sewn onto their bodies. I understand it for the Powerpuff girls since they're humans and it would be weird for them to just make them plain naked or just skin and nothing else, but hello kitty is a freaking cat. Why would they need to give it an undershirt for any reason other than to sell the accessories? I think they may also subtly do it for other bears that don't have undershirts. Like there's some bears that just have rly weird proportions or body shapes that make you want to just cover them up with clothes. You know? It could be just coincidental though. I also think it's rly dumb that BAB's don't have zippers so we can adjust the stuffing or swap out scents. There are only 2 reasons they don't have zippers: 1: Dumb kids can choke on the stuffing or zipper if it falls off or 2: They want us to have to come into a store to make adjustments to our bears. By having us come into the store, we're more likely to be tempted into buying more bears and accessories. Now I did want to bring up the Pokemon argument. I think they've been pretty diverse with the Pokemon they've been selling. The only repeat designs are the male and female sparkly 25th anniversary Pikachus and I think Eevee had some details changed about it (like its eyes or something) but I don't think it was marketed as a new Eevee or anything (I rly want a female Eevee tho. Maybe even sparkly). There are Pokemon BAB's I strongly dislike/will never get (mainly Psyduck, Snubbull, & Meowth) and there are Pokemon that I rly wish they would restock or make if they don't already exist (Piplup, Kantonian Vulpix, Galarian Ponyta, Oshawott, Chikorita, Flygon, Shiny Pokemon & more), but the one thing about Pokemon BAB's that I think is a huge ripoff/scam is the fact that u are forced to buy the bundles online. The workaround for this is that u can sell the unwanted accessories in your local build a bear, but again, some people don't have access to that. Also, if u want a scent put into a Pokemon BAB (or any build a bear that u didn't buy in person), you're forced to buy an unstuffed bear in order to get a scent and then sell the bear if u don't need it. That's what confuses me. So many people would be willing to buy tons of scent disks. Instead of pumping out new BAB designs, they should just make a fck ton of scent disks and allow ppl to buy as many of them as they want without requiring them to buy a bear with it. They could make so much money that way and it wouldn't be too hard on people's wallets since they're just scents. Anyways, regarding other repeat bears, I just say don't buy them if you don't want/need them. If a better version of one u have comes out and u wish u had waited to get the better version (like sparkly 25th anniversary Toothless over regular scaly generic Toothless), just sell your old one on eBay and put the money towards the new one. As a repeat bear, I personally think Glisten is cool tho. It's like a cute lil Christmas tradition and I'm always excited to see the new ones even if I don't end up getting them.
Actually, according to Sanrio, Hello Kitty is actually a little girl dressed as a cat!
I mean, when you expand your SKU’s to include licensed products there’s gonna be a quality loss imo. People aren’t as interested in a basic bear these days. They want something they know and recognize.
Apparently, I’m an outlier here, but I haven’t noticed a drop in quality at all. They all still feel nice and look great to me!
The founder took the company public. As soon as the focus became keeping the shareholders happy, the quality started to go downhill.