Shipping Delays and Empty Shelves 🚢
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Season 2: Episode 38 Description
In today’s episode: Have you noticed less toys on some shelves? It isn't from the Grinch, it’s "supply chain" issues. 🧸 Listen to the Ten News Definition Breakdown to get caught up on all the terms in the news right now. 🔗 Correspondent Pamela Kirkland brings us the latest on the supply chain and what products are impacted. 🛍️ Hear about the "Tickle-Me-Elmo" craze of the 90s. 🗞️ In the news: 🧀 Vegan cheese and a very old cake! 📗 And test your book publishing knowledge in today's Trivia on the Ten. ✅
Sources for the episode
Shortage Definition (investopedia.com)
A Supply Chain | National Geographic Society
Inventory Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
retailer definition - Google Search
This New Vegan Cheese Made From Microalgae Is Packed with B12 (greenqueen.com.hk)
Blackened mummy cake found intact 79 years after WWII air raid | Live Science
'Go be happy': Thousands of baby river turtles released in Peruvian jungle - CNN
Did You Know? Interesting facts about books | The Learning Key | phillytrib.com
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TRANSCRIPT:
Bethany Van Delft 0:03
Brace yourself, Ten'ers, there's a shortage of toys this year. I know what you're thinking, is the Grinch involved? Today, we're pulling up our stockings and getting to the bottom of global shortages. I'm Bethany Van Delft. It's Tuesday, November 30th. And this is The Ten News.
Various Voices 0:25
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Bethany Van Delft 0:34
Have you heard about shortages and problems with something called the supply chain? Have you noticed that some goods your grownups orders take forever to arrive? Are you wondering what's going on and what some of those economic terms you're hearing actually mean? Let's do a Ten News Definition Breakdown. Global shortage, a shortage in the world economy where people want to buy more products than are actually available. This can lead to products costing more for manufacturers and therefore buyers. Supply chain, a network of people in activities that help move a product from being made to being purchased by the consumer. The complexity of a supply chain might be different for different types of products. For example, produce that is sold at a farmer’s market has a different supply chain than a computer that is sold at an electronics store. Inventory, the number of goods or materials that a business has on hand. In other words, how many items do they have in stock? So, if there's a store that sells scooters, the scooters they have in the store are their inventory. And as customers buy inventory, scooting out the door on their new scooters, the amount of scooters in the store goes down. So inventory goes down. If the store can't get more inventory, aka scooters, the new customers can't buy scooters, the business won't make money and everybody's gonna have to walk. Aw man. Retailer, retail is the sale of goods and services. So retailers are businesses that sell goods and services to customers, toy stores, grocery stores, hair salons, and hotels are all considered retailers. It's not just PS5's supplies of a lot of different products that are running low. Will it affect the holidays? Well, here's Ten News correspondent Pamela Kirkland with the supply chain update.
Pamela Kirkland 2:53
Oh, the supply chain. Remember when we talked about that a while back and disruptions to something called the supply chain. Think of it as all of the steps that start with making a product and ending with you eventually bringing that product home. The covid 19 pandemic has really messed with shipping, trucking, and deliveries are all key to keeping the supply chain in tip-top shape. Companies plan out how to build their products based on how long it takes to make the product. Companies try to plan all of this out way ahead of time, so they know how long they'll need to make a product, and stores know when they can expect products to arrive. Well, it looks like the disruptions to the supply chain are just getting worse. What? Think of it as a global traffic jam that we're all stuck in at the moment, causing delayed delivery times shortages of products, and higher prices for some goods. Okay, that's bad. There are issues with companies being able to get supplies to make things, there are fewer people who are able to deliver those things. And there are fewer people available to stock the shelves. It's created a ripple effect and some of the latest impacts might have you rethinking your holiday gift list. Toymakers and sellers are in a crisis ahead of the holidays. Thanks to all of these supply chain issues, and it's going to make toys more expensive and harder to find. Mattel, the company that sells Barbie and Linkimals told NPR they started making fewer toys. Hasbro known for their My Little Ponies and Ugly Dolls started their holiday shipments earlier this year. Overall, toymakers warn you're likely to see emptier shelves this holiday season. They say the best thing to do is start shopping early. But it's not just toys. Even books are harder to come by. Are you kidding me? And it's not just real hardcopy physical books you can hold in your hand. Some digital ebooks also saw their release dates delayed. The covid 19 pandemic caused a lot of authors to have to push back their book release dates to this year. So there's a lot of really cool new books scheduled to release soon. Unfortunately for us, the supply chain issues may mean we have to wait a little longer to actually get our hands on a copy. Bummer. Remember the shortage of wood and lumber that happened this summer? Well, that caused the pulp, us to make paper scarce. And on top of all of that, some of the plants here in the United States that print books went out of business during the pandemic, which Lynx author Claire Bell Ortega tweeted that her latest release was being delayed a month to March 1st, 2022. Thanks to these issues, she said, I hope you're not too sad about it. I'm okay, it's for the best, and please pre-order to make sure you get your book in time." Is the supply chain causing a major inconvenience for us all? Sure. But with a little extra planning, hopefully, we can avoid a supply chain-caused headache.
Bethany Van Delft 6:32
Thanks for that update, Pamela. Running out of toys is no joke. That's what happened back in 1996. When a toy called Tickle Me Elmo came out. The first 400,000 toys sold out by Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. So 600,000 more were made in time for Christmas. But those sold out in record time too. Wow. Some people even fought each other for the toys. Others bought them in the store for $30 and then sold them online for 1000's more. That's unbelievable. The Tickle Me Elmo craze ended the next year but the toy company Tyco went on to create dozens of other tickle me toys, maybe someone in your family had one. Now let's see what else is going on. Move over cows. A company in Singapore has found a new way to make cheese without milk. This new vegan cheese is made with microalgae, which are single-celled organisms found in oceans and lakes. The cheese has been compared to cheddar and can be sliced and melts just like the real thing. Delicious. Archaeologists in Germany recently discovered a mummy though not the kind you might be thinking of. In this case, the mummy is a charred piece of nut cake that was preserved 79 years ago, when the city of Lubeck was bombed during the Second World War. You think it still tastes good at this point? Yuck. 3,000 baby yellow-spotted river turtles are now home in the Peruvian Amazon. The baby turtles are bred in captivity and released into a river as part of conservation efforts to make sure their numbers in the wild stay strong. Welcome home baby yellow-spotted river turtles. Coming up next...
Various Voices 8:36
What, what, what's the big idea?
Bethany Van Delft 8:39
Trivia on The Ten. Earlier we heard that there's a shortage of tree pulp needed for printing books. But how many books can be made from one tree? Is it a) 25 books? b) 50 books or c) 100 books? Did you guess it? The answer is B. One tree can make about 50 books. That's a lot of books from just one tree. You might even call it The Giving Tree. Time's up. But before we go, here's a quick note for the grownups. Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Look out for our new episodes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and extras on Saturdays. The Ten News is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts and is distributed by iHeartRadio. The Ten News creative team is ordering holiday gifts and hoping they get here in time and includes Tracey Crooks, Pete Musto, Adam Barnard, Tessa Flannery, and Nathalie Alonzo. Pamela Kirkland contributed to this episode. Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle and our executive producers are Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan. I'm Bethany Van Delft and thanks for listening to The Ten News. Going to start my Christmas shopping right now.
