This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.
Back in the heady dot-com days of 1999, any parent who didn't want to brave the holiday season parking lots knew what to do: Get online and buy those Christmas presents at eToys.com. Unlike Toys-R-Us, which had recently gone online itself, eToys seemed to know what it was doing. It offered a vast array of toys at reasonable prices, and it got them to you on time as promised.
But by March 2001, you were back to the Toys-R-Us option -- by then allied with Amazon.com, and doing online retailing the right way. In the end, eToys proved no more durable than the Furby -- much sought-after, priced up by speculators and hype, only to ultimately end up in the backyard, broken and ignored.
eToys went up fast and crashed hard, (not unlike a pogo stick), and in many ways it remains a textbook example of the excesses and "irrational exuberance" of the dot-com era.
Google's plan for netbook PCs moves higher into the clouds
Closing Bell: Stock bulls and dollar death (DDRX,GMCR, PEET, SBUX, EBAY, CI, TECD)
So long peak oil, here comes peak uranium
