MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — A lot of children on U.S. bases across the Pacific could wake up Christmas morning to some of the hottest selling toys in America.

Officials from the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the Navy Exchange Service Command, and the Marine Corps Exchange all reported selling at least some of the most popular toys of the holiday season.

The exchange at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, stocked seven of the top 10 identified earlier this month by BMO Capital Markets, a North American-based financial service provider.

Gary M. Walls, the chief of the retail/services division at Iwakuni, said during a phone interview last week that his employees have “a lot of input” in deciding which toys to stock and that he’s happy with the variety on the shelves, if not the quantity. Iwakuni even sells the year’s hottest fad product — the Zhu Zhu Pet toy hamster.

However, AAFES senior buyer Rochelle Callaway-McNally said via e-mail from her Dallas-based headquarters that AAFES won’t have the Zhu Zhu toys until February.

She said AAFES carries some of the most popular toys, but “not all items go to all stores.”

At Misawa Air Base, Japan, for example, Moxie Girlz and Nerf Blasters were a one-time buy, meaning “that they are not re-orderable to our stores,” Callaway-McNally said. Those items had already sold out.

But Bakugan spheres and Ultimate Fighting Championship figures can be reordered on weekly shipments at various AAFES stores.

Callaway-McNally also said shipping the products to overseas military bases can be challenging, since 65 percent of AAFES toys are purchased as one-time buys from China. Those toys must first be shipped to the States and then doled out to the overseas stores, she explained, eliminating enough lead time “to meet an increased demand in the middle of the season.”

Robert Rice, the AAFES store manager on Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, said LEGO products have been the biggest seller in his store this year.

“We have a 40-foot long LEGO section, which I feel is definitely meeting customers’ expectations,” he said.

Rice said the Nerf Blasters, another of the hottest toys in the States, are also popular.

Exchange officials at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, said toys began flying off the shelves just before Black Friday, and sales haven’t slowed since.

While the store’s biggest seller — Barbie products — failed to make the U.S. hot list, the Tag Junior toys, which are on the list, have been in high demand, too.

“We try and stay current with the popular items in the States, but this year our inventory was a little unbalanced,” said Pat Thompson, in charge of ordering and merchandising at Yokosuka. “We have a lot of toys, but just not all of the really popular ones.”

Thompson said that after some items sell out, it can take two to three months before they can get them restocked.

Ginger Baker, whose husband is a Marine stationed on Okinawa, said she had to visit Kadena’s store a few times before she found what she wanted in stock.

“I have found most things,” Brinker said. “The toy section is a lot better than I thought it would be.”

Some shoppers browse electronically for the hottest toys.

Johnnie Davis, a military spouse at Yongsan Garrison, in Seoul, said he did most of his shopping on the Internet because he wasn’t happy with what he found on AAFES’s shelves.

“I am not satisfied with the store’s selection,” he said. “They tell me that the toys that are here is all that they carry, but when I go to Camp Carroll, they tell me differently.”

Veronica Sandoval, whose husband is a Navy corpsman serving in Afghanistan, said the convenience of Internet shopping isn’t the only reason she goes that route.

“At the NEX, it seems like toys are always the same, and they don’t really rotate any new items in,” she said at Yokosuka. “One thing I do like about the exchange is their sales. They’re hard to beat.”

Stripes reporters Alfredo Jiminez Jr., David Carter and Matthew Orr contributed to this story.

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