While I think that the product selection is horrible and not at all what I would imagine in Zonkos, what I do see (fanged flyers, remembralls, etc) looks authentic. Yes the remembrall is plastic, but it looks nice and it's something a child might like. I understand that your not a child, that your an adult, but you have to look at it from a parents point of view. Most of the product selection is fairly reasonable right now, even with many products being made from high quality material (I have read that the Pygmy Puffs are very soft and high quality plushes along with other merch). I think the merch is fine and that it looks real enough. I would rather pay a cheaper price for something that does indeed look real (that remembrall has the design that the remembrall in the movie sported)
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While I think that the product selection is horrible and not at all what I would imagine in Zonkos, what I do see (fanged flyers, remembralls, etc) looks authentic. Yes the remembrall is plastic, but it looks nice and it's something a child might like. I understand that your not a child, that your an adult, but you have to look at it from a parents point of view. Most of the product selection is fairly reasonable right now, even with many products being made from high quality material (I have read that the Pygmy Puffs are very soft and high quality plushes along with other merch). I think the merch is fine and that it looks real enough. I would rather pay a cheaper price for something that does indeed look real (that remembrall has the design that the remembrall in the movie sported)
I understand that fairly reasonable pricing is good for the parental pockets, which is why I said have both. The remembralls in the movies, or described in the books were not plastic and no matter how authentic they are in design, they lack the collector appeal because of that. A lot of people shelling out the big bucks for the higher-end designed products are adult fans who grew up with the books so I think a balance of both "affordable kid products" along with a matching " adult collectable" product would be a win-win. $300 brooms sold out, $70 maps sold out ect. It's been proven that expensive will sell if they product warrents the price based on it's collection appeal.
The point I was trying to make is what will they reorder, and what will they not. I am just commenting on what I am seeing sold out. I don't believe Zonkos is sold out of plastic toys but I don't know this for a fact. I was asking for a discussion in order to better inform us all. I see this Infinitus Convention stuff on the local news and wonder how much UOR is kicking that they have no product in the shops. I really really truly think that UOR thought they had enough of MOST WW product until August. I think they are happy and mortified at the same time. They now know what will sell, yet they don't have it to sell during this large fan convention.
Oh great, that was something else we were wanting (we seem to always collect plushies for souvenirs)...at this point I'm just going to tell my kids what's there is there, but don't get your hopes up for anything specific....like I said we won't be back that way until 2012 at the earliest. We'll just focus on all areas of Universal, as it's our first trip there ever and I hope it will be a good one. Two weeks from tomorrow we leave!
I don't get why there is a resistance to higher quality products. You can have both, you know? Just like WB sells cheap, ugly wands and then the Noble collection. I can get a cheap wand at a toy shop for 5 bucks, or a noble wand for 30. I'd rather pay more for the good wand. Same applies for a remembrall. I'd rather have a fancy one, if I would buy one at all.
I saw plenty of people walking around with them today. :shrug:
I think you guys are overestimating what the level of quality should be for these kind of shops. First of all, it's a theme park, so cheap is to be expected to the point. Teebin, I know your not a Potter fan, so you might not know Zonko's is a place where kids go to buy things to trick their friends and maybe enemies. They are supposed to be disposible and inexpensive. Zonko's is NOT the place for expensive products. In fact some of the merchandise availiable there was thrown in because the store it SHOULD have been in was not created, ala Pigmy Puffs. They, in the books, were availiable in a pet store. I do not, however, disagree with having other, higher quality copies of existing merch and maybe some new things from the books. But a new store would surely have to be built to sell these more expensive higher quality wands, remembralls, ect... There's simply not enough space to fit in new merch and I do not see them taking a great amount of things off the shelves, if they do start to sell new things, because I haven't come across a single item that has been untouched on the shelves, including the slightly ludicrous, but surely fitting, Duck On Bike. The reason it appears that they aren't selling these items becaus ethey fill the shelves back up every morning. Rant over.
P.S. In regard to butterbeer, tonight in the Hog's Head when purchasing my frozen, the bartenders told me it had never fully frozen. Meaning it was soupy. It was still good, though it melted faster. Not sure if it was like that all day, or just that batch.
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I rotfled at that... Pygmy Puffs were available in Fred and Georges joke shop... Weasley's Wizard Wheezes... They were in the "Wonder Witch" product section... However, that shop is in Diagon Alley and I don't think Universal wanted to add any more stores from a different place, one branch was enough.
I feel that the cheap gags are okay, but definitely should not be what Zonko's in entirely comprised of.
Teebin--you're absolutely right about the more expensive display items. Though I do not know if they belong in Zonko's, I feel that somewhere in the park, they should have a place. If I were in the market for a Remembrall, I'd much rather have an actual glass one that looked exactly like Neville's from the films rather than an obviously plastic one.
And Luna's character is severely unrepresented. I think A LOT of people love Luna. I do. The cheap "Quibbler" (although it isn't terrible--I own it and have it on my wall with the glasses displayed elsewhere) could've been made into something great. They have all the information in the world from the books to create a full magazine. With all the spotlights on Luna from the fifth through seventh books, it would have been easy to fill pages and make it convincing that Xenophilius Lovegood wrote it. And if they sold Spectrespecs that looked like the ones from the movie (a la the ones Acid Pop linked to earlier in this thread from the Warner Bros. store), they'd make a killing! I like Teebin's idea of the Lion hat. It would be a good product. I also think Filch's Emporium could use some Luna themed jewelry like Warner Bros. sells.
Okay, enough about Luna...
I do love most of the merchandise in the WWoHP, but Zonko's is BY FAR the weakest. At first I was upset when I found out they were combining Zonko's and WWW (I've gotten over it), but if that's what they are going to do, then they have endless options for products. I just whipped out HBP to get some ideas:
Skiving Snackboxes (like someone mentioned :thumbs:
Punching Telescopes (obviously they couldn't be AS violent as in the books...)
Love Potions (like Teebin mentioned, but not so intoxicating
maybe just a decoration)
There's probably much more that could be included, but these are just the first few things I saw when looking over the WWW part of HBP.
A couple things I wanted to mention before I end this long-ish post:
I quote:"Muggle magic tricks!" said Fred happily, pointing them out. "For freaks like Dad, you know, who love Muggle stuff."
(property of J.K. Rowling--of course)
So I suppose some of the normal stuff can be justified in this way.
Next, a bit of irony:
I quote:"Pygmy Puffs," said George. "Miniature puffskeins, we can't breed them fast enough."
Ain't that the truth?
Teebin--you're absolutely right about the more expensive display items. Though I do not know if they belong in Zonko's, I feel that somewhere in the park, they should have a place. If I were in the market for a Remembrall, I'd much rather have an actual glass one that looked exactly like Neville's from the films rather than an obviously plastic one.
And Luna's character is severely unrepresented. I think A LOT of people love Luna. I do. The cheap "Quibbler" (although it isn't terrible--I own it and have it on my wall with the glasses displayed elsewhere) could've been made into something great. They have all the information in the world from the books to create a full magazine. With all the spotlights on Luna from the fifth through seventh books, it would have been easy to fill pages and make it convincing that Xenophilius Lovegood wrote it. And if they sold Spectrespecs that looked like the ones from the movie (a la the ones Acid Pop linked to earlier in this thread from the Warner Bros. store), they'd make a killing! I like Teebin's idea of the Lion hat. It would be a good product. I also think Filch's Emporium could use some Luna themed jewelry like Warner Bros. sells.
Okay, enough about Luna...
I do love most of the merchandise in the WWoHP, but Zonko's is BY FAR the weakest. At first I was upset when I found out they were combining Zonko's and WWW (I've gotten over it), but if that's what they are going to do, then they have endless options for products. I just whipped out HBP to get some ideas:
Skiving Snackboxes (like someone mentioned :thumbs:
Punching Telescopes (obviously they couldn't be AS violent as in the books...)
Love Potions (like Teebin mentioned, but not so intoxicating
maybe just a decoration)There's probably much more that could be included, but these are just the first few things I saw when looking over the WWW part of HBP.
A couple things I wanted to mention before I end this long-ish post:
I quote:"Muggle magic tricks!" said Fred happily, pointing them out. "For freaks like Dad, you know, who love Muggle stuff."
(property of J.K. Rowling--of course)
So I suppose some of the normal stuff can be justified in this way.
Next, a bit of irony:
I quote:"Pygmy Puffs," said George. "Miniature puffskeins, we can't breed them fast enough."
Ain't that the truth?
I feel that the cheap gags are okay, but definitely should not be what Zonko's in entirely comprised of.
Teebin--you're absolutely right about the more expensive display items. Though I do not know if they belong in Zonko's, I feel that somewhere in the park, they should have a place. If I were in the market for a Remembrall, I'd much rather have an actual glass one that looked exactly like Neville's from the films rather than an obviously plastic one.
And Luna's character is severely unrepresented. I think A LOT of people love Luna. I do. The cheap "Quibbler" (although it isn't terrible--I own it and have it on my wall with the glasses displayed elsewhere) could've been made into something great. They have all the information in the world from the books to create a full magazine. With all the spotlights on Luna from the fifth through seventh books, it would have been easy to fill pages and make it convincing that Xenophilius Lovegood wrote it. And if they sold Spectrespecs that looked like the ones from the movie (a la the ones Acid Pop linked to earlier in this thread from the Warner Bros. store), they'd make a killing! I like Teebin's idea of the Lion hat. It would be a good product. I also think Filch's Emporium could use some Luna themed jewelry like Warner Bros. sells.
Okay, enough about Luna...
I do love most of the merchandise in the WWoHP, but Zonko's is BY FAR the weakest. At first I was upset when I found out they were combining Zonko's and WWW (I've gotten over it), but if that's what they are going to do, then they have endless options for products. I just whipped out HBP to get some ideas:
Skiving Snackboxes (like someone mentioned :thumbs:
Punching Telescopes (obviously they couldn't be AS violent as in the books...)
Love Potions (like Teebin mentioned, but not so intoxicating
There's probably much more that could be included, but these are just the first few things I saw when looking over the WWW part of HBP.
A couple things I wanted to mention before I end this long-ish post:
I quote:"Muggle magic tricks!" said Fred happily, pointing them out. "For freaks like Dad, you know, who love Muggle stuff."
(property of J.K. Rowling--of course)
So I suppose some of the normal stuff can be justified in this way.
Next, a bit of irony:
I quote:"Pygmy Puffs," said George. "Miniature puffskeins, we can't breed them fast enough."
Ain't that the truth?
These are sold in Zonko's.
Frogki, no need to be rude. I was merely confused by the mention of the Magical Managerie, which sells animals, nearby. But, yes, the Puffs were sold in WWW. I really can't imagine why as they're not a joke.
Neither are love potions. The shop was mostly about wizard pranks and gags (with a section for muggle tricks), but it also included anything else the Weasly's knew would be popular with students.
I wasn't trying to be rude and I apologize if you thought of it that way. There were certain products that the Weasley twins invented that were girly and were not pranks at all. They called them Wonder Witch products, and Pygmy Puffs were one of them.
It's a-ok. Thanks. I was mostly wondering why they sold them in Zonko's which was supposedly an all joke shop.
shrug I guess, like someone said, they wanted to sell products from WWW and couldn't have that store, so put them in the place that best fit, even if it didn't fit perfect. I guess they chose right to sell the Pygmy Puffs; they sold out in the first week! They should have seen it coming! They are pink, adorable, and a good price!It's a-ok. Thanks. I was mostly wondering why they sold them in Zonko's which was supposedly an all joke shop.
And people were buying them by the armload...
Really?! :bonk: I'm not being sarcastic. I'm a teenage male, so I don't see the appeal. How much were they, anyway?
About $12.95. I'm also a guy, but I have a sister who thinks it's so cool and wants one, so we'll be looking in Zonkos whenever we go...
Yeah. I was in line for Honeyduke's for 45 minutes, and I heard the bell going off every few seconds when they sold some. And I heard up to four names being said at once. People were snatching them up like crazy. They were $15.
Yeah...teenage female here. I can see how the appeal might be lost on most males, lol.
I'll be at the park this time next week! Thanks everyone for your posts. I'm trying to figure out my budget and hearing the prices/availability is helping. Thanks for posting the birthdays for the wands too! Although mine is Ash, and I'm not wild about the handle on it. I'm a leap year baby though, so maybe I'll just use having a weird birthday as an excuse for getting a different one.
