Toys that no longer inspire dreams... " La Grande Récré in suspension of payments, nth victim of Amazonwas the headline in the press at the beginning of March 2018, sounding the alarm; a few months earlier, the American giant Toys "R "Us which had declared bankruptcy, followed by English Maplin.
With a snap of his fingers, Eliott closed his tablet, feeling weary: Kevin's birthday was coming up and he really didn't know what to buy him; after looking at all the main websites, he couldn't make up his mind.
No choice...
Until a few years ago, he used to look forward to strolling through the shops in shopping malls; he'd spend long moments chatting to the shop assistants... before buying on Amazon, because it was cheaper! But he would never have ordered directly without having felt the cuddly toys and other paraphernalia in shop.
Then La Grande Récré, Toys "R "Us and others Maplin had disappeared and Amazon had opened its first fully-automated physical shops, with extremely attentive robots guiding customers around the premises with formidable efficiency: customers never left empty-handed.
The Amazon Toys were not very large - much smaller than the old ones Toys "R "Us for example - but you could always find THE product to suit your needs.
As soon as you entered, you were greeted by an automatic machine that used facial recognition to greet you by name: in an instant, it knew everything about you and your children, of course! It had access to your Internet browsing, your Facebook profile and even, for customers PremiumYou'll also have access to a complete history of your most recent purchases, whether online or elsewhere.
When we went home and surfed the web to reassure ourselves that we'd made the right choice, we quickly felt reassured: because the online shops were overflowing with such an avalanche of references that we quickly found ourselves lost.
Then, over the years, this impression of overabundance gradually disappeared, Amazon selling his data to his suppliers, who could then optimise their offer; and as the years went by Eliott began to experience a feeling of suffocation...
In the Amazon ToysThe robots were as zealous as ever, but they were spending less time with you because somewhere in Seattle, a top executive had decided to improve productivity by better managing the length of exchanges between customers and machines: a slight acceleration would result in substantial savings - fewer humanoids, less floor space, no small savings.
The websites of Alibaba and all those new African outsiders who were beginning to make their mark were full of interesting and completely different toys... but it was impossible to order them, as customs systematically blocked them because they didn't meet the new Japanese-American-European safety standards - the new NAE!
Eliott began to miss the days when he used to waste long hours wandering between the rays of the sun. La Grande Récré or Toys "R "Usand then repenting for having ordered the toys that had made him dream on the Web rather than buying them in shop!
