Last year it was that vapid "Tickle Me Elmo®." Thousands of people stood in line, freezing their proverbial you-know-what off in the morning chill to purchase one, only to be rebuffed as the doors opened and there were none to be had. Mysteriously they had all been sold already to employees and their friends and families. Mass hyteria reigned. A lucrative black market in Elmos sprung up. Those little critters were going for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. Why? So junior could play with it once, rip its guts out, and toss it in the fireplace?

This year it's Furbie. Cute little thing. Talks up a storm of Furbie words, which all sound alike and which none of us can understand. Eventually he learns lots of darling English phrases. Sure, Furbies are lots of fun. Even adults enjoy playing with them. Problem is the manufacturer produced less than 1 for every 250 Americans. So, again we have the long lines and the empty shelves. And again, mysteriously, when you finally make it into the store after waiting all night in the freezing cold, you find a hundred people standing in line at the cashier, three or four Furbies in tow, and they all are relatives of store employees!!!

Geez!!! We've been fleeced again. Me? I'm getting damned tired of it. This once a year conspiracy to create a blockbuster holiday toy-buying frenzy is getting old. "Furbie Fever" is beginning to sound like the bad sequel to "Attack of the Killer Tomatos." Don't get me wrong, I love the little guys, although mine seems to be stuck on "feed me" and sneezing a lot. Or he sleeps and snores. Then there's this warning about removing the batteries ("your Furbie will forget everything he learned.") What's up with that? Do I need to have a spare battery pack ready to jump start my Furbie? Maybe I should just fill him with plutonium and watch him glow.

I say, enough of this annual holiday low-supply, high-demand scamming. It's time for revenge, damn it!! Creating demand and mass chaos for fun and profit seems to be every toy company's favorite version of the "Grinch that Stole Christmas." Suppose everyone took this sinister strategy to its logical conclusion...

What if car manufacturers, peanut butter purveyors and condom makers followed the same evil practice? What if, gasp, there were only enough tickets to an NBA game for the first 100 fans? Well, OK, who cares about that one. What if Celine Dion or Shania Twain only put out a handful of copies of their latest CDs? What if only the first 10,000 cars each morning were allowed on the Beltway? What if telephone access were limited to one in every 250 Americans? (Hmmm...what if only one of every 250 of us had to pay income tax?)