Slide Saga

Although there are a lot of things we have to do without (hamburgers, baked cheetoes, dill pickles, sour cream, bag salad, scented candles...), living overseas where a lot of things are manufactured sometimes can be helpful. There is a website we can use to find "extras" of things that are manufactured for use overseas. Let's say a company from the U.S. orders 5,000 of something. Usually the factory will make 5,100 so they can discard the defective items, but in truth they do not discard them. They sell them on this website we use. Sometimes they cost the same, more or less as in the US, but really I do not understand their pricing methods.

I have wanted to get AB a slide for a quite a while. I noticed that Little Tykes says they are manufactured in the US, but I saw them on this local website. I figured maybe they are just put together in the US while their actual parts are made overseas. The picture on the local website was straight from the Little Tykes website, and the price was around the same. It is really nifty if anyone wants to get one in the US, it collapses and is quite handy for people who need to save space.

Anyways, we ordered it, and we received it 2 days later. As I put it together I noticed some parts did not fit together very well, the basketball net and the basket ball were really cheap (the lines on the ball were drawn in with a sharpie), and then I saw it. It was not Little Tykes. It was a faux Little Tykes.

I would have been perfectly fine with keeping it if: 1. The fake Little Tykes cost less than the real one, because it did not cost less; 2. They had been forthcoming with its faux-ness when we ordered it, and 3. They had not tried to convince me it really was Little Tykes when we confronted them about it (it has an entire different company name stamped on it).

We spent the next month trying to return it. It was a super pain, but for me it was all about the principal. I figure I learned my lesson and will get AB the slide I saw at Ikea next time we are there. Faux Little Tykes, humph, what has the world come to?