What is it with Elsa?

I asked Miss M what she wanted to do for her birthday, and out of all the choices, she wanted to go to ToysRUs to see if we could find an Elsa doll.  If you don't have little girls, you may not know what a freakish phenomenon this show is, but EVERY little girl in America stinking LOVES Elsa from Disney's Frozen.  It's ridiculous. Silly even.  Every adult I talk to is like, "Why Elsa?  She's not even the nice one." I happen to think both girls are a little messed up and I blame terrible parenting via Disney's writing team, but that's another story altogether.  

Apparently Disney had no idea the movie (or character) was going to be popular because they have grossly under-supplied the demand.  You cannot find an Elsa doll ANYWHERE. I have been looking for at least a month for anything Elsa and have been completely unsuccessful. I found them on Amazon, but everything on there is around three times the retail price.  I don't care how much my kid wants a toy, I am not paying three times retail. 

The lady at ToysRUs told me that they get shipments on Fridays, so they occasionally will have Frozen toys before noon on Fridays.  Miss M's birthday was on Friday, so we headed over around 10:30.  They had one Elsa item.  It was a wig.  Woot. 

We went back out to the car and I called 6 different stores to see if they had anything Elsa and they all told me no.  One went so far to tell me that they had a shipping problem and wouldn't have more until the end of May.  I then called my mom to see if she could find anything online and I could drive to pick it up. I ended up driving over to Grandma and Grandpa Watts' house to look on the computer, too.  When I did, Amazon actually had an Elsa Barbie-size doll for only $16.99.  When I put it in my cart, there were 12 left.  At the same time, my mom found ONE Walmart in all of the Walmarts in Salt Lake and Utah county that had a single Elsa item in stock. It was a 6-pack of all the characters in the Polly-Pocket size for $25. I took maybe 5 minutes to decide which to get and by that time, ALL 12 of the dolls on Amazon were gone. I couldn't purchase the 6-pack from Walmart either, it told me they were sold out.  Luckily my mom had put it in her cart and was still able to purchase them or Miss M would have been without a present for her birthday.  It is craziness!