FAMILIES and shoppers were left furious after toy shops shut during a promotion event.

Build-A-Bear stores in Basildon and at Lakeside Shopping Centre, Thurrock suddenly closed during the pay your age event, which saw shoppers pay the age of their child for a bear toy.

Hundreds of families and shoppers flocked to grab a low cost teddy bear at the shopping centres in south Essex.

Build-a-Bear, Eastgate Shopping Centre, Basildon and Lakeside Shopping Centre joined other stores in the nationwide event.

Mothers spoke of their anger and feel they deserved a better explanation.

Janine Acott was one of the parents who waited in line for hours in Basildon.

She said: “We are stood outside the build a bear shop and they had to shut at 4pm and were not allowing anyone in.

“It was total chaos.

“Staff were rude and also all contradicting. They kept changing their story.

“One minute they were saying it was a safety reason when there was only about 10 people in the shop

“Then another worker said it was because of no stock, yet we could see the stock.

“We were then told we can go back the next day and pay the full price for a bear.”

The promotion also caused major chaos nationally at other large centres including Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool while in Belfast the police were called.

Gemma Butler, Marketing Director at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, said: “This was an ill thought out and unprofessional promotional execution, one that not only risks their own brand reputation, but has the potential to bring the wider marketing sector into disrepute.

“Plenty of brands pull off successful promotional executions that resonate well with consumers, but in this case, it is hard to understand the rationale.

“If their goal was to highlight demand, Build-A-Bear ought to have considered the consequences of thousands of children going home tonight disappointed and in tears.

“Alternatively, if this is down to poor planning and a failure to accurately forecast demand, then their marketing team needs to immediately re-examine their insight and planning process.”

A company spokesman said: “Build-A-Bear Workshop’s Pay Your Age Day event generated an overwhelming response, resulting in long queues, extensive waits and disappointed Guests.

“We feel it is important to share that, based on the information available to us before the day began, we could not have predicted this reaction to our Pay Your Age Day event.

“We understand that many guests were turned away as, due to safety concerns created by the crowds, authorities in certain locations closed Build-A-Bear stores and, in other locations, we were forced to limit the queue. Unfortunately, given these circumstances, we were unable to serve all of our guests for the Pay Your Age Day event.

“In response, we distributed vouchers to guests, who were present in queues, to be redeemed for a future purchase.

“We are now making vouchers available to our UK Build-A-Bear Bonus Club members, who log into their account by midnight on 18 July, 2018. Vouchers related to this event will be honoured through 31 August, 2018.

“It is our sincere desire for all of our Guests to enjoy the best Build-A-Bear experience possible.

“As such, our goal with the voucher extension is to enable us to better flow traffic to the stores over the next several weeks to avoid long queues and wait times as much as possible. Therefore, we strongly encourage Guests to consider delaying their trip to Build-A-Bear, and we appreciate everyone’s understanding.”