Ok, Bunjiis are before my long hair time. Since they seem to be such a hit, why are they no longer made?

kashencarrie, Bunjii Design, Inc. closed in the Fall of 2004. Brad "Bunjiidude" Bealmear posted about it back on our old boards when it happened. Here (http://archive.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?p=202262#post202262) is the link to that thread.

Of course, the Bunjiis he gave to that ebay seller are long gone by now. :(

Thanks, I didn't even think to look on the old boards as I didn't know when they stopped making them.

What is a bunjii?

A Bunjii is a ponytail holder that is made like a lasso. Instead of trying to pull your hair through an ever tightening loop as you would with a traditional hair elastic, you pull your through the loop just once, tighten the lasso, and wrap the "tail" around the base of the ponytail and "lock" it in a special hub. They were made out of mini-bungee cord. Most were plain or simply beaded; some were specials with lampwork beads and sterling and gold alloy hardware.

I hesitated to reply to this post, as I happen to have a couple of Bunjiis for sale on the Swap Board (there are pictures there if you want to see what they look like), but since I worked for Bunjii Design, Inc, I seem to be the most logical person to answer this (and no one else had yet).

From what I understand, they were difficult and labor intensive to make (had to be made by hand), the materials were hard to get at a consistent quality, the quality of the individual bunjii was very dependant on the quality of the base materials, and they were the sort of hair toy that could not be sold, new, at a price which made up for the time and difficulty of manufacture. (Lots of people will pay $40 for a hand carved hair fork, few would pay $40 for a plain bunjii, even if it took as much time and effort to make as the fork.)

At this point, they are rare, and no longer made. So the people who know they like them, and have the money, will pay more for them, due to scarcity. But if they were generally available, there aren't enough people willing to pay that price to make mass manufacture profitable.

They were also somewhat inconsistantly successful - some people did well with them, some people didn't. For example, I can use them for braid-ends, but not for ponytails. Even when available new, they often wound up being swapped by people who tried them and didn't care for them. At this point, many of the people spending a lot for them are those who tried them when they were less expensive and who liked them then enough to pay more now.