This story is going to be of no interest to anyone other than me, but I still feel the need to document this absurd journey I went on in the pursuit of a Christmas gift.
This tale starts in mid-December 2023.
I was actually feeling rather proud of myself. It was the first year in my adult life that I had most of my Christmas gifts bought with a couple weeks to spare. I have eight siblings and over a dozen nieces and nephews, so Christmas shopping is always a stressful and painfully expensive part of the holidays for me. The fact that I had managed to find gifts perfectly suited to most of my family members had me feeling pretty good about the upcoming holiday.
At least, until my youngest sister visited me a little over a week before Christmas. While chatting about her job (she works in a store near my apartment), she happened to mention a bit of Christmas decor she'd been tempted to buy at work. Apparently, her store had a large plush goat in their holiday department that was dressed for the cold and sang "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" when you squeezed its hoof. She thought it was adorable. Unfortunately, by the time she decided to bring one home, they'd sold out. She asked another worker, but was told that they were leftovers from the previous year and would not be restocked.
After my sister went home, I randomly decided to check the store's website, in case this goat could be ordered online. Sure enough, I found the goat she had described. I'd already bought her gift, but saw no harm in adding another one to the pile, so I ordered it. Cool. The singing goat then left my mind for a few days as I had other pre-holiday preperations to worry about.
Then, an email arrived. It was an automated email informing me that my order had been "cancelled as requested" with no reason stated. Confused, I went on the store's website and found they didn't have a customer service number to call. I emailed them instead and received an answer informing me that the goat was no longer in stock and couldn't be shipped out. I don't why it never occurred to them to not sell the goat if they didn't have it in stock, but whatever. They offered me a refund and we ended the exchange. (By the way, the store did refund me for the price of the goat, but refused to return the shipping/handling fees, despite them never actually shipping or handling anything. I didn't have the energy to argue it with them, but I will be quietly boycotting them out of spite for the forseeable future.)
The thing is, it really didn't matter at this point. I already had my sister's gift. The goat was only supposed to be a fun addition anyway, and it was already too close to Christmas to do anything about it. Unfortunately for me, I'm too stubborn for my own good. The dispute with the store had turned a random whim into a challenge. I needed to get this goat.
The store's website still had the goat listed for sale, so I went there to check for the manufacturer's name. In theory, it should have been a simple matter of googling the company's name. It wasn't. You see, the manufacturer listed does make Christmas decor, but it's all along the lines of Christmas lights and garlands. No plush toys, and definitely no singing goats.
I'd hit a dead end and the story may well have ended there, except for a random twist of fate: Tik Tok.
There was a trend going around Tik Tok of people buying this little plush goat that sang "Jingle Bells" and screamed. Apparently, the internet thought this was hilarious. The goat in question looked nothing like the one I was hunting for, but I did notice in one of the videos that there was a company logo on its hoof. This logo was an exact match for the logo on the goat I was seeking.
Armed with this new information, I looked up the manufacturer of this new screaming "Jingle Bells" goat and found a wiki site that documented all of their releases over the years. They had the original goat listed as a release from the prior year. It was no longer being produced, but the wiki did mention what stores it was sold at. Turns out, this particular toy was only distributed in America through the chain of stores my sister works for -- a lead which had already proved fruitless. It was also distributed in Canada, though, through a store chain that is apparently very popular up there, so it was easy to find their website. Sadly, they didn't sell the goat anymore. Another dead end.
It was time to take this hunt from mainstream distributers to the backwaters of collector forums. And there, I finally struck gold. I found exactly two of these goats for sale in Canada. One was being sold on ebay; I didn't feel safe purchasing a used plush toy, so I passed on that one. That left a Canadian toy collector who was selling a brand new singing goat in its original packaging. I negotiated a fair price for it and he shipped it out.
Miraculously, the package somehow made it to me in time -- arriving the day before Christmas Eve. (I sent a heartfelt thank you message to the seller for getting it shipped so quickly.)
Christmas morning, I presented my little sister with a singing Christmas goat. If I had started feeling a bit foolish at this point for putting so much energy into such a silly gift, that feeling quickly vanished. The smile on her face when she opened the box more than made up for the hassle. (The goat even managed to make my dad laugh, which is a rare sight.)
There is no real lesson learned here, but I am going to mention this story from now on when my parents try to argue that the internet is useless. If not for people gleefully posting about their screaming goats on Tik Tok, I would have never tracked down my sister's gift.
Background Image by Valentin Salja