Not Unexpected

This from the NYT:

American consumers, uneasy about the economy and unimpressed by the merchandise in stores, delivered the bleak holiday shopping season retailers had expected, if not feared, according to one early but influential projection.

Spending between Thanksgiving and Christmas rose just 3.6 percent over last year, the weakest performance in at least four years, according to MasterCard Advisors, a division of the credit card company. By comparison, sales grew 6.6 percent in 2006, and 8 percent in 2005.

"Unimpressed by the merchandise".

A few days ago, we went to the local Mall to see what was available for gifts. We found - for the most part - three kinds of merchandise:

1)- Cheap, poor quality junk that could only impress a two-year-old,

2)- Expensive, poor quality junk trying to get sold using a "big" name brand, and

3)- Expensive, but useless crap that nobody would find any purpose for.

And guess what? Just about everything had a "made in china" label on it.

"Unimpressed by the merchandise".

We are starting to learn that just because it looks all new and shiny, it doesn't mean that it will last out the week. And that is most of China's products available to us in a nutshell... pretty and shiny, but made of inferior everything. I am positive China can -and does- make high-quality products... we just don't get any of them. We get all the junk.

Americans are starting to realize that - no matter how inexpensive or costly or pretty - crap is still crap - and not worth dragging into your home, or any of your friends.

We ended up buying food stuffs for everybody on the gift list. Things like Hickory Farms, Harry and David, gift items from the See's candy Kiosk, places like that.

Everybody loved it. Lesson learned:

Give yummy holiday food items designed for the season. You'll be heroes. And your family and friends won't have the chore of tossing out all that cheap and possibly toxic crap your local retailers are trying to dump on you.