hey A Mickey Muppet
i can say, i understand how you feel. But I can tell you possibly why it takes that long. I live in NY myself and have recently visited the FAO store to make a second one and when I got there, they were literally sold out of a lot of items. Some that I can remember was they were sold out of the blue body, red long curly hair, the tweed colored jacket. They were not getting these items in until the middle of January. I actually purchased mine online.
The people at FAO actually build the ones they ship out, it is not a separate entity who does it. So you are literally getting whatnots still built by the FAO staff.
Hope this helps.