Well, the vacation is over and the Gent is back, burnt, ruint and a little creaky from sleeping on the ground for a week. I didn't do much hunting while I was in Charleston. I figured I would find the same stuff I would back in Georgia, and for the same reason. After all, it's summer drought season all over the country. I know because the bellyaching about it started somewhere back around mid-May. Every year the summer drought hits and is proclaimed "the worst summer ever", usually by guys who have only been collecting for a year or two. Well, after 12 years I really can't say if things are better or worse, but I did some thinking, while sweltering on my air mattress trying not to feed too many mosquitoes, about the nature of droughts, and the cause of droughts, and see if this makes sense to you.

Let us suppose a new retail establishment opens in January. On opening day there are twenty cases of cars in the store. In each of those cases there are maybe a dozen cars of interest to collectors that get grabbed up right away. Normal shoppers account for about 200 more, and at the end of the month there are approximately 1000 cars hanging on the pegs.

The next month, another twenty cases come in. Again a dozen or so from each are grabbed by collectors. Casual shoppers again buy 200 or so, and the store now has some 2000 cars in inventory and both the pegs and the free-standing bin-o-death are full.

March rolls around, and with it come twenty cases more. The collectors take their dozen or so out of each and the casual shoppers take their 200 or so. Of course, the collectors are now leaving the cars that were hot in January to snatch up the newest releases so I finally get what the gottahaveitnows bought two months ago. The store now has 3000 peg warmers on the premises. The pegs are full, the bin is full, and so is an end cap dedicated to the little toy cars.

April brings its twenty boxes and once again, the collectors take their share, and the casual shoppers take their usual percentage. There are now 4000 little cars filling all the displays and half-empty boxes are taking up space in the store room. The cars in the bottom of the bin-o-death are starting to look torn and ratty. Store inventory controls go into effect and halt the ordering of new stock until inventory levels dwindle down.

After all, it is time for the summer movie tie-ins to arrive and they are going to require premium shelf space if they are going to sell before the movies run out of steam. The summer pool toys are piling up, and really need to go where those broken cases are being warehoused at the moment. The upshot is the store gets no new cases for May.

Nor for June, or July. The collectors get tired of seeing the same old peg warmers week after week. They pester the toy manager about when he is going to get something new. The casual shoppers are buying squirt guns and swim masks because it's summer and the little darlings are home from school, and by golly they're gonna play OUTSIDE or else. The manager's hands are tied. He's got to order this other stuff and can't afford to inventory any more little toy cars until he gets rid of some of the ones he has.

So there may be sales. There may be buy-one-get-one-free weekends to move them out. What there won't be much of is fresh paint to get the collectors excited. Going to the stores becomes an exercise in frustration. Collectors talk bitterly about quitting because they can't find anything new. They don't believe the toy manager when he says there's nothing coming in. They don't realize the broken cases they see in the back room are the same ones they happened to catch on a pallet one night back in March and opened when nobody was looking. They figure the cars they are supposed to be getting are going somewhere else. The toy manager hates to even look at the things. He started out ordering heavy because there seemed to be such a clamor for the things. But the demand was never for the whole case, just for a handful of cars from each case, with the majority left to take up space. All summer long, collectors and employees regard each other with distrust and loathing.

Why do you think the only fresh paint has been in the blue book 3-packs? It 's listed as a different item and can be ordered in bulk. But the blue book packs bring their own problems, as the new cars get ripped out of them and replaced with peg warmers. Thus they become one more reason for the stockers and the collectors to dislike each other.

Finally sometime in late September-early October the first Christmas merchandise starts rolling in. Indoor toys are re-emphasized and the back stock of now ancient toy cars has been whittled down to a more manageable size. The new models start to filter onto the pegs and everything that was invisible in June starts to become common by November.

Is there any way to break this cycle? Not until Mattel figures out how to put more than a dozen cars that collectors want RIGHT NOW in a case of 72. I don't see that happening any time soon. Nor do I see the emphasis on secondary market re-sale value (which makes those dozen or so darn hot) to go away either. This is the price we pay for having so many different models made in such large volumes every year. Of course they could cut way back on the production of the segment cars, which seem to account for the majority of the peg warmers. But then, I suppose it just wouldn't do to have the Yu-Gi-Oh cars to be more limited than the Treasure Hunts, now would it?