Five Reasons Grown Adults Are Buying A Children Advent Calendar For Themselves
It started as a gift for a niece. It ended up next to a keyboard. The quiet second market for squishy countdown calendars is people with jobs.
The Hands Want Something To Do
Anyone who has sat through a long call knows the feeling. The meeting is fine, the work is fine, and the hands are looking for a pen to click. The market for that is enormous and mostly badly served.
- Stress balls are too firm to be interesting after a week
- Pen clicking annoys everyone within four metres
- Phone picking up costs you the thread of the call
- Most desk toys are the same object every single day
The last one is the interesting failure. A fidget object stops working when it stops being a surprise, which is the exact problem a countdown calendar was already built to solve.
Twenty-Four Different Ones Is The Whole Trick
A squishy advent calendar hands you a new object every morning for twenty-four days. Not a new colour of the same thing. A different shape, a different give, a different noise.
Product note: Twenty-four different characters, plus one jumbo behind the last door. The assortment varies from box to box, so two calendars are not identical and a second box is not a repeat of the first.
By the end of the month there are twenty-five of them and the drawer has a rotation. Novelty is the active ingredient, and this is the only fidget product that ships twenty-four of it.
What Squeezing One Actually Feels Like
These are mochi-style squishies rather than stress balls. Press one flat between a thumb and forefinger and it stays flat for a beat, then rises slowly back into shape.
Product note: Some of the toys have a slightly tacky surface. That is normal for this material and it is what gives the slow rise. If they pick up dust, rinse them under a tap and pat them dry.
The Numbers, For A Desk Rather Than A Child
Same box, different buyer, and the figures read differently when the person buying it is the person using it.
Twenty-five desk objects for less than the price of a decent mechanical keyboard keycap set, and they arrive one at a time, which is the only reason the novelty lasts a month.
Nobody Buys Just One
The pattern in the reviews is consistent enough to be funny. Somebody buys one for a child, opens the box to check it is any good, keeps three, and orders a second box.
Product note: Two calendars are $69.99 against $79.98 for two bought singly, and three are $94.99. Free shipping starts at two, so the second box costs less than the first one did.
Two boxes cost less than one and a half. One to give, one for the drawer, and no awkward conversation about where the snowman went.
One For The Niece, One For The Desk
A different soft squishy behind every door, and a jumbo one behind door 24.
CHECK AVAILABILITYWhat Customers Say About MerrySquish
Individual experiences shared by verified customers.
“I bought it for my niece and then bought a second one for myself, which I did not plan on.”
“Squeezing one while I am on a call has become a thing. Three of them live by my keyboard.”
“I did not expect to get addicted after the first one.”
“The slow rise is the bit. Stress balls never did anything for me.”
“It is the only desk toy I have not got bored of, because there is a new one every day.”