Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 11/24/17> the real life story of, “Smoked Turkey…. and The Big Bear”

Have you ever had the feeling that some things were “just meant to be”? I have had those feelings on many occurrences and 9 out 10 times something positive has ended up being the result, when everything was said and done.

I made it no secret that my goal on Thanksgiving Day was to eat a good meal, with my family, of the smoked turkey from the New Braunfels Smoke House and win that big stuffed bear that was being given away in a drawing at the local Palais Royal store.

I am happy to report that the smoked turkey was excellent again this year. Also as I predicted, the youngest boy and I were the only takers when it came to the turkey, so we had plenty at the initial family feast and we have plenty for leftovers this weekend.

My daily dose from yesterday had a mistake in it and I need to correct that right now. The store giving that big bear away opened at 2:00PM not 4:00PM and that threw a major wrench in the works for timing the meal and getting done eating in time, in order to get a ticket for the big stuffed bear drawing. Also that bear wasn’t just any old stuffed bear either, that big bear was from the FAO Schwarz Company of New York.

The store was founded in 1862 in by Frederick August Otto Schwarz, thus the name FAO Schwarz Company, even though the initial company name was “Toy Bazaar”. The first location was in Baltimore, he opened two others in Philadelphia and Boston shortly after that. The name was changed when Mr. Schwarz opened a store in New York in 1870, “Schwarz Toy Bazaar” became the new name for the company. In 1889 the “’Toy Bazaar “was dropped from the name and it simply became FAO Schwarz Company.

The claim of the company was “the original Santa Claus Headquarters” and it would hold an annual event in November of each year revealing the hottest new toys for the Christmas season, that tradition started in November of 1869. The first publication of their highly in demand toy catalog was published in 1876 and continued until 2015.

My wife and kids tell me that the flagship store, in New York City, was featured in a handful of movies over the years. I personally remember that it was the setting for a significant portion of the filming of “Home Alone 2”, back in the early 1990’s. That has been a movie I enjoy watching every few years when I can catch it on the television.

FAO Schwarz Company has had several owners in the history of the company and the company ended up closing all of its locations, the last being the flagship location in New York in July of 2015.

So how is it that Palais Royal ended up with some of the big bears from a toy company that folded up a couple years ago?

The story is that a group purchased the FAO Schwarz brand from Toys R Us back in 2016 and with the help of the descendants of the original founder they re-launched the brand on October 24, 2017 with a pop up store in New York. FAO Schwarz has always been known for their plush stuffed animal toys and as part of the re-launch they created these bears in a small version to be sold with a portion of the sales to go to the Marines Toys for Tots program. “Buy a Bear / Help a Child “, Bears that Care; only $7.98 each, according to the Palais Royal Black Friday flyer.

The giant stuffed bears were given to participating retailers to hype the promotion. Palais Royal bought into the promotion and received two big bears for each store location. They used the big bears as a “hook” to get people to their stores on Thanksgiving Day for early bird Black Friday specials, and an invitation only event earlier in the week.

Now I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to detail the history of FAO Schwarz Company and the bear, but now I have to let you know that I in fact did not win the big bear for Shortie. I was one number away from winning, one number.

We did have some excitement though so I’ll share that with you. To make things even more interesting the first seventy five people in line got an additional scratch off ticket that was good for a certain amount off on a purchase, the majority of the scratch offs were $10 value but they had one valued at $50 and the top prize in the scratch off game was a $250 gift card to the store.

My scratch off ticket revealed the $10 value, so did my wife’s ticket, $10, but since this was a contest for 18 years old and over my oldest boy was able to get a scratch off ticket as well. He borrowed my keys to scratch his ticket since I was already done revealing mine, “Are you shitting me?” as he scratched away the silver coating from the ticket, “I just won the $250 gift card” he said, as he flashed the ticket for me to see.

Sure as sun rises in the morning, he had that $250 winning ticket. So he was off to the customer service desk to retrieve his winnings. So all told the family had tickets that were worth $270, not bad for standing in line for 25 minutes.

Well, since we’ve come this far let me go ahead and tell the story of the big bear drawing and we can wrap this daily dose up.
The big bear drawing had 100 tickets given out to the first 100 adults through the door. We each got a ticket as we were in the 55 to 60 range of people, I didn’t count exactly our number in line, but I know we within the top 75 since we got the scratch off ticket. As this store has done in the past, they had a great deal on 50” RCA televisions, but they only had 30 off them at the $200 price tag. So they had also given out tickets for those, if you had a TV ticket you were guaranteed that you would have the opportunity to get a TV at that $200 price.

There was a mad scramble to the electronics department when the doors opened. People were exchanging their tickets for the boxes with the TV’s inside and making their way to the front of the store to pay. I counted at least seven people leave with TV’s before the drawing for the big bear had even taken place.

I was only there “for the bear” so I just hung by the front of the store and watched people. As I watched the people leaving it reminded of Mrs. Mayweather, from a couple of years ago, who left before the drawing for the employee discount card. The card that I ended up winning when they had to redraw, since she had left and wasn’t around when the store manager called her name.

So, about thirty minutes after the store had been open, the call over the loudspeaker was to make your way to the front of the store and get your green tickets out. The manager then had one of the clerks pull a ticket and he called out the number over the loud speaker. There was no reaction from anyone at the front, he called the number again and no one stepped forward. “Okay, well I guess we’ll pull another ticket” was the words from the manager.

The next ticket was pulled and the same result, no one claimed the big bear. So back into the box for a third ticket, the third ticket was the charm. About three seconds after the manager called out the number on the ticket the lady standing next to me started screaming for joy, “I got it, I got it, right here” as she was making her way to the front service counter.

I’m sure Shortie will be disappointed that I didn’t win her that big bear she had fallen in love with, but she won’t be disappointed in the outcome of the drawing, her mother had the third ticket number that was drawn.

Overall we had a great time at the store as a family. I was tasked with babysitting the big bear for the next hour as my wife and son went and did some shopping with his unexpected windfall. I managed to find a chair in the men’s department where the big bear and I hung out until it was time to leave.

Since my wife doesn’t like her photographs on the internet, my son took a picture of me babysitting the big bear so I could share it with you in my daily dose blog today. The real winner of the big bear will have to wait for Christmas, but I can tell you in advance this will be her favorite present she gets this year. She knows that these bears could not be purchased, she had already inquired about the price when she first discovered the big bear on a shopping trip with her mother earlier in the month.

There is something about owning things that even people with plenty of money can’t buy, so I am sure this big bear will be a treasure of hers for a life time.

Until next time,
@sultnpapper
#theunmentionables
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