"Oh you just feel so desperate, time is closing and you gotta get it, gotta get it, and there's no hope anywhere," says Amy Butler.
Butler had a tall order to fill this Christmas -- five NintendoGame Boy Colorgames. All she found were empty shelves. Butler put her name on a waiting list, and finally hit the jackpot.
"We were looking for Color Game Boys and looked at about five stores, and finally ordered it over the Internet. Everybody was back-ordered, and finally Target called and said they had a box of them in," says Butler.
Patti Fusell searched the Triangle and Wilmington for a hard-to-find Barbie airplane. She snapped one up before it could get away.
"It was on the floor and I thought someone else had set it there. So I kind of looked around to see if anyone was coming to pick it up, and then I just put it in my cart," she says.
Karen Wilson drove all over town looking for Pokemon Nintendo games. She finally got frustrated with toy stores. and turned to the Internet instead.
"The people who still are doing rainchecks are not promising until after Christmas is what I've been told. I gave up. Amazon.com is 30 minutes," she says.
If you have hard to find toy, you can earn a small fortune by auctioning it online.
Take the Barbie Cash Register, for example. It retails for $40 if you can find one. Wednesday an Apex woman sold one oneBayfor $132. The same toy also sold later in the day for $250.
It is expensive and frustrating, but parents say it is worth the aggravation when they finally find the toy their child just has to have.
• Credits
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