RETAIL ROUNDUP

We at Retail Roundup were just reading The New York Observer and it

made us wish the Daily Pilot was as funny as that fine newspaper. It also

made us wish the Daily Pilot was printed on pink paper, like the

Observer. But in this world, you can’t always get what you want.

You can, however, get 98 new Beanie Babies at the Discovery Shops in

Corona Del Mar. The limp, stuffed creatures come in pretty much every

color you could hope for, and the price is said to be right.

Are Beanie Babies still cool? Haven’t parents realized that they

should be collecting Laser Scooters? But then Laser Scooters are being

produced in large quantities, undercutting their collectibility. You can

get one for $52 on the auction Web site eBay and scuttle around town as

if you were a hipster on the streets of Manhattan.

FINGERBOARDS? IF YOU INSIST ...

Or you can buy a Happy Meal from McDonald’s and get something called a

“fingerboard” with your hamburger and fries.

A fingerboard, if you don’t know, is a little tiny skateboard that you

can manipulate with your fingers. It’s sort of like a stress ball for

8-year-olds. And until Aug. 4, eight different fingerboards are being

crammed into Happy Meals, along with little fingerboard ramps and

stickers and other accessories.

This is all very exciting to us because the fingerboard idea is the

brainchild of Theriot & Associates, a Costa Mesa marketing agency.

And it’s also thrilling to us because the set of all eight fingerboard

Happy Meals, complete and in mint condition, is already available on eBay

for $9.17.

Has there ever been a marriage so successful as that between the

Internet and kitsch?