Steve McGill pulled his old teal Chevy into the parking lot of the Toys''R''Us and mumbled a curse under his breath. There, in front of the store’s locked doors, was a line of people. It wasn't even 9 am, and there was a line of people.
He pulled around back to park in the employee parking area near the dumpster and continued to curse. Folks wrapped all the way around two sides of the building. He was dreading this day for weeks. Today was Hasbro Hell Day.
Hasbro Hell Day was not its actual name. Today didn't really have a name, except for Sunday. Hasbro Hell Day was just what he and his fellow co-workers called it.
Hasbro was about to release a bunch of new toys and limited edition Toys''R''Us exclusives. One hundred lucky stores were going to get all of it to release a month early. Wouldn't you know it, his store was one of them. Wouldn't you know it, today was that day.
He parked his car.
Looking in his rear-view mirror, Steve watched as people of all ages, shapes, and sizes stared anxiously back at his vehicle. He knew what was coming. They knew what was coming. He steeled himself and put on his headphones. He hit play on his phone and the glorious sounds of metal filled his cranium.
He stepped out of his car and into Hasbro Hell Day.
He moved to the sound of the drum like the hunters of old stalking their prey. Only as he crossed the lot and got within arms-reach of the people in line he felt less like a hunter and more like the hunted. They could smell his fear. As one, they turned on him.
“Hey! Hey man! Be a bro, man! I gotta get the new Mace Windu with Super Defenestration Actio—“
“Do you have a bathroom my son can use? He needs to go number tw—“
“I’ll give you one hundred bucks to let me in the back door! Two hundred! Come on guy, you know I’m good for it!”
Steve grunted along with his music as walked past each and every one of them, fighting the urge to run. He kept his pace measured and consistent. He knew that if he ran it was all over. Suddenly, a large man dressed as a horse pointed a furry hoof at him and shouted to the rest of the crowd.
“Hey everypony, this guy’s gonna let us in the back!”
A little boy in the crowd grabbed his pant leg and Steve’s fight-or-flight instinct kicked into high gear. He shoved the little boy back at his mother and ran like a cheap pair of pantyhose. Adrenaline pumping, he sprinted for the far corner of the building as fast as he could. Behind him, he could hear the stomping of feet and the roar of the crowd. He didn't look back.
As he turned the corner, he gazed upon his salvation. It was his store manager, Kim. She was standing there at the employee entrance, fumbling with her keys.
“Open the door!” shouted Steve “Open the door!”
Kim, who still hadn't had her first cup of coffee, turned with bleary eyes in time to see the enraged horde crest the side of the building and spill into the alleyway.
“Mother of God.”
The fear she felt in that moment energized her like no cup of coffee ever will or would. She had to get that door open. Her entire being went back to focusing on the key ring.
As Steve ran, he felt in his heart of hearts that they weren't going to make it. He and Kim were going to be wrapped up in a sea of humanity and they’d be forced to listen to inane fan theories on their favorite shows and movies as they ransacked the back room. Worse, they’d be fired for sure. Corporate didn't look kindly on these sorts of things.
He blinked away tears as he ran. His lungs burned, his legs burned, his heart burned. He shouldn't have had that spicy 7-11 breakfast sandwich. He was about to give up all hope when a sound, beautiful as the morning dawn, chimed over the chorus of the metal anthem playing in his ears.
“I GOT IT!” Kim held aloft that one key with the Geoffrey sticker on it and stuck it into the key hole. She turned the key. She opened the door and walked in.
Steve, who could feel the hot ragged breath of the throng behind him, also felt a new burst of speed take him. He’d never run this fast before. It felt good. He was going to live. Better yet, he was going to keep his job.
He jumped through the open door like he was clearing a hurdle, and he spun around quick as lightning to help Kim shut the door. They shared a sigh of relief.
The bangs and petulant screams that came from the other side continued for almost two minutes.
Kim looked at her employee, with his sweat soaked brow and the music blaring from the headphones that dangled at his knees, and smiled.
“Hasbro Hell Day?” she asked.
Steve was bent over panting with his hands on his knees. He said nothing, but he nodded. Kim wandered over to the coffee station in front of her office and started a fresh pot.
“Well,” she sighed, “it’s just you and me opening today. Tracy’s sick. I need you to help set things up for when we open the doors in forty five minutes, okay?”
Steve nodded again, and got to work.
Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle awoke with a start. She felt the large box she was in sway back and forth. Through the packaging and cardboard all around her she heard the faint sound of incessant drumming and the squeal of dueling guitar solos. Whoever was carrying the box was humming along.
As she looked around the crowded box, she noticed other purple ponies in their blister packages lined neatly around her.
“Hi!” she said to one of the other ponies, “I’m Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle, who are you?”
The other pony gasped. “Oh! I’m Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle, too! Let’s be friends.”
A third pony spoke up. “Um, I hate to interrupt but, did you say that your name was Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle?”
“Yep!” the two plastic mares said in unison. The third pony stammered. “That’s amazing! My name is also Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle!”
Farther down the box more voices chimed in.
“Mine too!”
“Same here!”
“I love it when you brush my mane!”
“Let’s be friends!”
The first Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle giggled to herselves “Okay girls, let’s not get carried away. We’re toys, remember? We’re going to go on the shelf at the toy store and then someone’s going to buy us so they can take us home and play with us!”
A chorus of “yays” and “yeses” and “woo-hoos” filled the box. Suddenly the box sprung open, and everypony froze.
Steve stared into the large package of My Little Pony dolls. When the last song ended, he was sure he heard something from inside the box. He pulled out a doll at random.
The blister package had a hole over the doll’s butt tattoo. Above it, the hole was cheerfully labeled “Try Me!” in three languages. Steve shrugged and poked a finger into the hole, pressing the butt tattoo of the little doll.
“I love it when you brush my mane!”
He pressed a second time.
“Let’s be friends!”
“Steve, are you playing with the toys, or are you putting them up?” called Kim from the bike aisle. “We have to open those doors in a few minutes.”
Steve stuck his head around the end cap of the aisle he was standing in and looked out upon the undulating mass of humanity pressed against the glass. They eyed him desperately and pawed at the impenetrable sliding doors. He shuddered involuntarily.
Daniel Black fidgeted excitedly in his spot in line. He was number 15. He showed up at three in the morning to be here, and soon… soon he would have what he came for. One of the pockets in his cargo shorts vibrated and from deep within them Pinkie Pie’s voice rang out.
“Play! Play! Play!”
It repeated a few more times as he fumbled his smartphone out its holster.
“Hello?”
“Sup, Brony.”
Daniel recognized the voice of his friend Kyle, who was in spot number 147 in line. He turned around and waved at his friend on the other end of the phone.
“Oh, not much, PrincessK.” Daniel always referred to Kyle by his preferred handle, “I’m just PSYCHED OUT OF MY MIND!” He laughed maniacally, and a nearby little girl hugged her father’s leg in trepidation.
“Word.”
“Word.”
Silence lingered in the air.
“So,” started PrincessK, “which pony are you getting today? Let me guess. It’s Pinkie Pie right?”
Daniel let out a pained sigh. “No. Not today, my good chum. Today I am cheating on my waifu.”
PrincessK gasped incredulously. “Dude. Dude, you always get a Pinkie Pie when we visit this Toys”R”Us. I… feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”
Daniel wiped his brow and turned to look inside the windows lining the front of the store. There, he saw an employee carrying a box of full of his heart’s desire. The Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle.
“Look. PrincessK. I know this is going to be hard on you. Hell, it’s hard on me. But I need you not to freak out about what I’m going to tell you, okay?”
Daniel heard chewing on the other end of the line and turned to look at his friend in the distance. He was eating a Hostess Fruit Pie with a furrowed brow. After swallowing a bite, PrincessK answered him.
“Okay dude. I’m ready. Lay it on me.”
“I’m here… for Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle.”
The phone in Daniel’s hand went dead as PrincessK hung up on him. From 132 spots in line away, he watched as PrincessK screamed to the heavens in incoherent rage. After taking a breath, he did it again. The people who were standing around him took several steps away from him. PrincessK took an angry bite of his Hostess Fruit Pie.
“Play! Play! Play!”
“Hello?”
“WHAT THE HELL DUDE? I THOUGHT WE AGREED THAT THE PRINCESS-WHO-SHALL-NOT-BE-NAMED IS RUINING THE FRANCHISE? WHAT ARE YOU, A HASBOT?”
“PrincessK, calm down, man. I took the oath, same as you. Do you think I’m happy about standing out here since three in the morning to get a Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle?”
At first, there was only silence on the other end of the line. “Then… why man? Why are you doing this?”
Daniel squared his jaw. “Two words, my good chum. ‘Manufacturing Defect.’”
“Huh?” chewed PrincessK.
“Word on the street is that the first hundred or so made of the Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle Talking Brushables were made and packaged without the central magenta star of their cutie mark.”
PrincessK looked all around him to make sure no one was listening in on their conversation. “No way.”
“Yes way, PrincessK.”
PrincessK laughed “Nice rhyme, my Zebra!”
Daniel smirked and continued “You know I collect only two things, MLP; Pinkie Pie merch and Manufacturing Defects. One day? All those MDs will be worth a buttload of bits. I’ll sell them, and then I’ll fund my very own portal to Equestra!”
He laughed his maniacal laugh again.
“You’re crazy, dude. You can’t build a portal to Equestria! You should make a robot pony maid instead.”
Daniel stroked his goatee and nodded “Actually that’s not a ba—Ooof!”
The doors opened, and a flood of fleshy bodies poured into the Toys”R”Us, pulling Daniel along to meet his fate.
Kim stood on top of the counter next to the open door and shouted to Steve. “Here they come! Don’t let them see the fear in your eyes!”
The crowd spilled over the summer toy kiosks and into the store proper. From Kim’s vantage point, high on the counter, she could see the glob dividing along the different tribal lines.
The Jedis, Stormtroopers, and Darth Mauls went left. She knew there would be no salvaging that aisle today. It was dead to her. She watched as the Iron Men, Hulks, and one confused-looking Batman moved straight ahead towards the Marvel branded aisle.
Finally there was the pony group. The smallest of the three groups but she knew they were the feistiest of them all. She nodded grimly to herself and jumped. She leapt from the top of her small counter to the other side of the half-wall that physically separated the entrance from the exit.
Landing with a flourish, she dashed over to her manager’s console between the six self-checkout stations and the exit door. A few button presses later and a pleasing chime sounded from each of the six stations at once.
“Thank you for shopping at Toys”R”Us!” greeted the six identical pre-recorded voices to nobody in particular, “Would you like to buy some batteries or a warranty with that?” Kim smirked and cracked her knuckles. It’s go time.
Steve was hoping to finish unpacking the last large box of flying purple horses when he heard Kim’s warning. From his position squatting on the ground, he felt the earth shake beneath him. A grown woman in a tutu was the first to round the corner, she squealed with delight at the carefully arranged toys on their shelves and pegs.
Gleefully, she shouted “PONIES!” and began grabbing arm loads of product from the exclusives end cap.
More bodies filed in. In a heartbeat, the exclusives were gone. An eye-blink later, and the last of the limited edition restocks had vanished as well.
A man in a fedora was busy recording the chaos on his smart phone, narrating in real time for whatever audience would stumble across his record of the Battle in Aisle Five. A set of twins, attached to each other and their mother by leashes, began biting other children. In the heart beats that followed, the once full aisles were reduced to the dregs.
Cheap costume supplies like masks and hats were readily available, but they were only grabbed so people could look under them. Ornaments and school supplies went flying and there was a great gnashing of teeth as the aisle filled to bursting with more and more people every second and—
“Hey!” shouted a man with a handlebar mustache, “What’s in that box?!”
Steve looked to where he was pointing and realized that he was what the man was pointing at. He looked down, and with a second gasp, he realized that he was the one holding a box. It was a mostly filled box. It was the last box of new pony toys.
Steve shrieked in abject terror and made a mad dash for the electronics counter.
Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle had no idea was going on. She knew she was a toy in a box full of other toys. She knew that today was the day they were going to be bought and played with by their new owners. She was excited about that.
But she wasn't so sure about the rest of whatever this was.
With half the box having been emptied, her blister package now sat on top of the pony stack. Just as the nice man with the headphones was about to put her on the shelf, he slammed the box shut with panic in his eyes. The sounds that followed filled her little plastic heart with dread.
Was there a war going on? Why was there so much shouting and banging? It was really scary. Suddenly, the box lifted off the ground and everypony inside shifted back as it began to speed off in some unknown direction.
She felt the packaging around her lift up into the air, and for a moment she felt like she was floating. Underneath her, she heard another Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle say “Let’s fly to the Castle!”
She nodded thoughtfully. That sounded like a pretty good idea. But before she could say anything the sensation of flight came to an abrupt end.
Daniel, dual wielding NERF riot shields, forced his way through the crowd around the electronics counter. It stood as an island fortress against a sea of hope-maddened bronies, pegasisters, parents and children. Each and every one of them was clamoring for whatever was in that box. He saddled up to the Leapster side of the fortress and peered down. Over the din, he called out to the frightened red-shirt.
“You know, you have the power to end this!”
The frightened man looked at him. “W-what do I do?”
Daniel’s eyes, eyes hardened by hours of waiting in lines, softened ever so noticeably as he whispered to the man. “You must let go.”
“Let go?” Called back the young man, his heart racing “Are you mad?! They’ll blow up like a volcano or something!”
The crowd around him pressed in feverishly as he continued his diplomacy skill checks. “Then cast it out! Cast it into the fire!”
The man cowering behind the counter sounded unconvinced when he asked “T-the whole box?”
“Yes!” nodded Daniel emphatically “Only, throw them out one at a time, that way I can see… I mean they can see when you run out!”
The man, still a boy really, behind the counter took several deep breaths and left the box at his feet as he stood up to his full height.
“Alright, you monsters! You want ponies?”
He reached down, threw open the lid of the box, and pulled out a Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle. As he held it in hand high above his head, Daniel reeled back, his eyes wide with shock. There it was.
His prize.
Standing not six feet away from him, held aloft in the outstretched hand of a 7-11 breakfast sandwich fueled man at the end of his rope, was a Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle Talking Brushable with the ultra-rare manufacturer’s defect. She had five white stars surrounding a purple void as her cutie mark. The large magenta star burst that typically adorned that royal flank was nowhere to be seen.
Daniel brought his hand up to his heart and gripped his chest. A single tear fell down his cheek, and he knew what euphoria felt like.
“Well here ya go!” And the man chucked it out into the crowd.
Into the opposite side of the crowd from where Daniel was standing. A tall man with a little brunette girl on his shoulders at the back of the group caught the toy, and the girl let out a triumphant roar. Daniel’s euphoria turned to bitter ash in his mouth.
“Nooooooooooooo!”
He fought his way through the crowd, shoving brony and child alike, trying and failing to make his way through the rippling swarm. He angled his arms in front of him like a train’s cow-catcher and plowed through, neither stopping nor offering apologies whenever some unfortunate soul got underfoot.
Just as he broke through the other side of the crowd, something hard hit him in the back of the head, and he lost his footing.
“Let’s be friends!” It said in a chipper voice, and he groaned. Getting back up to his feet, he threw the offending toy back into the crowd and looked back to where the man and the little girl once stood.
They were gone.
Panic addled his senses, and he stormed about the electronics section going through aisle after aisle. He cursed as each one came up pony free. Then, he heard a giggle of childish delight far off to his right. There, standing in line before the self-checkout stations, stood the man. There, on his shoulders, was the girl. And there, in her hands, was his prize.
They were second from the front of the line, behind Batman, and he knew what he had to do. Daniel ran. He ran hard and fast. He avoided the crowd around the electronics counter that clamored for more as the fool behind said counter continued to throw out product one at a time.
He was nearing his goal, the toy was just thirty or so feet away, when he saw something entirely unexpected.
There, to his left, in the impulse buy candy aisle, was an unopened box of Wave 1 My Little Pony Blind Bags. He stopped in his tracks.
“They don’t… they don’t make those anymore.” He said with no small amount of reverence. He bent down to turn the box over. Over its barcode was a bright orange sale sticker. The box was priced at $9.99.
Reeling back, Daniel let out a bark of laughter. This was an incredible find. These boxes go for at least a hundred and fifty bucks on eBay. He’d hit the motherload. He plopped down on his backside and began rummaging through the bottom shelf for more diamonds in the rough.
Laughing with maniacal glee, he pulled a second unopened box of Wave 1 blind bags from the shelf. Hoisting both boxes over his head, he let out of savage whoop of victory.
“Whoop!”
It was then that he realized that the father and daughter were nowhere to be seen. He dropped the boxes to the ground and ran out of the store.
Screeching to a halt on the sidewalk outside of the Toys”R”Us, he looked left and right. Finally, he spotted the troublesome pair. The father, having just finished securing his daughter in her car seat, opened his own door and climbed inside his old minivan 100 or more feet into the parking lot.
Daniel dropped to his knees. Tearing at his button up shirt, he screamed in anguish. “Nooooooooooooo!”
“Don’t make eye contact, dear.” Said a mother as and her daughter walked hurriedly past him.
Daniel sat there on his knees and watched as the old minivan with his prize backed out of its parking spot. The grim expression on Daniel’s face, one of hopelessness and unfulfilled dreams, turned to one of impish delight.
The car had a vanity plate. A vanity plate that read ‘TOP DAD’. An easily traceable vanity plate, considering that his friend Kyle worked at the DMV. He laughed.
Oh he’d find her. He’d find his Rainbow Power Princess Twilight Sparkle Talking Brushable with Manufacturer’s Defect.
He’d find her tonight.
“Hey brony,” said PrincessK as he walked out of the Toys”R”Us, bags in hand, “what are you doing on the ground?”
Daniel stood up and brushed himself off. “Nothing. Nothing. Just thinking. Hey, can you look up license plate numbers at work?”
“Yeah, I do it all the time. But enough about that! Check out these two unopened Wave 1 blind bag boxes I found in there! They were only ten buc—“
“Nooooooooooooo!”
