Comment by vharuck
5 hours ago
I (or really, my parents) were burned by something like this recently. They bought my kid an FAO Schwarz marble run tower for Christmas. It's made of terrible plastic, with rough seams, and every play session ends when a marble gets stuck somewhere nearly impossible to reach. It requires partial disassembly, bending, and a screwdriver to pry things out.
I was shocked that an FAO Schwarz toy sucked so much. I looked at reviews on Amazon to see if anyone else had these problems, and they had. The FAO Schwarz brand had been bought by the ThreeSixty Group in 2016. Now it's just a way to polish the image of cheap toys.
I bought a teddy bear from them in 2014 and another in 2025. It's night and day. The earlier one is really high quality, the newer one feels like I won it from a claw machine.
Yo, Teddy bear from a claw machine at the end of the 90’s were high quality btw
This is one of the reasons 3D printers are becoming a lot more common in homes not inhabited by the sort of geek/nerd like me who you would (correctly) assume owned a 3D printer or two.
Yes, something you print yourself will likely be lower quality than a bought one from years ago and you'll pay more in material and time than buying a new one will cost, but... it may be no worse quality than a new bought set, possibly better, replacement parts can be reproduced easily or additional parts added to the set cheaply (no buying a full set to get a couple of extra pieces that you want) and things can be customised.
One of the bigger 3D catalogue sites (I think MakerWorld, but without checking I'm not 100% certain) ran a marble-run themed contest some months ago for which there were a lot of interesting entries, some just copies of basic parts/sets (great if that is what you are looking for) but also some that were more innovative than that. If you have a printer, or know someone who has, it might be worth you looking into that if your kid would appreciate a new set, there are a lot of free designs¹ out there you could experiment with.
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[1] and paid ones, some designers try to make a living this way and some of them produce designs that are well worth the cost as they may be free of issues more amateur designs could have
FAO's used to be a prestige NYC brand. Of course, they carried many other branded products but those were mostly top-shelf (and expensive) as well. A LOT of formerly pretty high quality brands have ended up getting sold off to brand management companies and the like. I just got a few pairs of shoes from AllBirds because while the name will live on I have no doubt the quality will become pretty generic now that it's no longer a Silicon Valley must-have thing.
> A LOT of formerly pretty high quality brands have ended up getting sold off to brand management companies and the like.
That sounds fascinating... I'd love to read an article about that.
You make me almost curious enough to do some digging. So many "mom and pop" type shops end up having to sell out for various reasons. A few survive but it's not common.
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>I just got a few pairs of shoes from AllBirds because while the name will live on I have no doubt the quality will become pretty generic now that it's no longer a Silicon Valley must-have thing.
Didn't get the memo? They're an AI infra company now ><
It seems silly doesn't it?
LL Bean sort of has AKAIK. I could also name some less mainstream equipment brands out west. Probably REI too.