Children really test Marketers’ will. If you are a Marketer and a parent you know exactly what I mean- you end up buying a bunch of over-priced, disposable, and soon-forgotten crap because your kids’ desire-du-jour is more powerful than your will (and ability) to resist.
I’ve done it all. Dora stuff, Diego stuff, Little Pet Shop, and Transformers. And I’ve chased down Elmos when they were scarce and plied my kids with sugar (and high fructose corn syrup) when my love for Michael Pollan dimmed in comparison to the nirvana-light of peace.
I’ve done bad things to them. I feel worse now than when I was the only dad in swimming class who didn’t know the words to “The Wheels on the Bus.”
And somehow they must sense it because two days ago, they got their revenge on me. In a BIG WAY. Like young Napoleons they picked
the field of battle well; in this case not Austerlitz but Build-a-Bear Workshop (BABW) in Bellevue Square Mall.
Let’s pause for a moment so I can describe how BABW works. The process is something like this:
1. Kids and parents walk in.
2. Kids pick hollowed-out carcasses of “animals” to later be stuffed and adorned.
3. Kids wait in line with parents.
4. Fake-nice BABW worker injects a large metal tube in an orifice of the unstuffed carcass and allows kids to “step on the pedal,” filling the animal with some substance (cotton maybe) and thereby re-animating said animal.
Oh hold on.
3.5 Before the colonoscopy, BABW worker asks the kid in a sweet voice “now sweetie would you like a ‘sound’ in your {monkey, polar bear, dog, etc.) ?
3.6 Kid says “yes.” The better ones say “yes please.”
3.7. BABW worker asks hapless parent “Is that okay w/you?” Harassed parent, having no clue what just went down, agrees.
Okay back to the progression.
5. Animal is now stuffed and kid is asked to “pick a heart” and then to “hug” the animal. Kid complies.
6. BABW worker then directs parents and kid to the accessories/clothes/other stuff area of the store so that kid can “dress up”
the animal.
7. Kid picks up enough stuff to bankrupt an already soon-to-be-weenie-night-thinking parent.
8. Kid and parents then collaborate on creating a “birth certificate” for newly-christened Freddy the monkey.
9. Parents and kid then stand in line for a LONG time.
10. Clerk then rings up the purchase.
11. Parents notice that each item costs a lot and that they’ve been had. The “sound” costs $4 or $5 bucks. That sly question to the kid at the beginning was an upsell. Who TF knew.
12. Parent then pays while Clerk contributes to the denuding of the Amazon rain forest by packing Freddy the monkey in a huge cardboard box.
13. Bank account is diminished by around $35 per kid.
14. Parents then indulge in self-loathing; being a sucker is hard to take.
I love my kids, but for now I’m mad as a bear. At myself.
