I think we are fairly sane parents when it comes to annoying kid paraphenalia that gets marketed to them. We don’t completely ban that crap, but we try not to buy too much of it.
Let’s just ignore the fact that I bought Kailan a Spiderman backpack, umbrella, ball and fruit snacks for Easter for the purposes of this discussion…m’kay??
Anyways, I am constantly amazed at what they pick up at daycare. Take the aforementioned Spiderman. We had no Spiderman toys, he hadn’t watched the Spiderman movie, and we certainly didn’t sit around talking about the awesomeness of Spiderman, but alas he loves Spiderman. Pretty sure the other boys at daycare love Spiderman, too. It is that peer pressure and group think jiving together to contaminate his little mind and our pocketbook.
Of course, I buy him the toys since I know he loves the webbed-one…for some reason even he doesn’t completely understand. I’ve heard him talk about “Transformers” a few times recently, Lord help us. I hope that doesn’t become his new obsession.
Then other day he said he wanted to watch, “PowerRangersMutantTurtles”.
Huh??
Well, I guess after awhile, it all just kinda blends together.
With our first son, we were total marketing suckers for whatever he wanted. Learned that lesson well and have not succumbed the second, third and fourth times around.
Love K’s new character creation.
…and then the marketing geniuses somehow go and make sure there are few generic choices (try finding a non-commercialized ball, or umbrella), and what N-C items there are, often are higher priced. It’s an odd world.
I am trying to be better about buying into that stuff. He does ask for things that we definitely DON’T buy him. We don’t want to raise materialistic little urchins that get whatever they want, that is for certain.
Kimberly, you are so right. Whenever you try to find something without Pixar, Disney or Warner Brothers splattered all over it the price is usually higher. It sucks.
Yes, it happened that way here, too. One day, nothing. The next? Spiderman! Power Rangers! Batman! Transformers! Without ever having seen a show.