Gift cards put kids in charge
Sure, they may not know the value of a penny, let alone a dollar. And, yes, they probably need Mom to drive them to the store.
But that’s not stopping kids from getting the power to stock their own toy boxes from aunts and grandparents in the form of gift cards.
The valuable rectangular pieces of plastic increasingly are the kiddie present of choice for grown-up givers and the youngsters themselves.
This year’s KidzEyes holiday survey found 30 percent of 6- to 8-year-olds preferred gift cards to traditional wrapped presents. It’s a small proportion compared with their older siblings: 46 percent of those ages 9-11 and 68 percent of teens 15-17 opted for gift cards.
Still, “it tells you how much kids want to have a say in what they’re playing with,” says Paul Metz of C&R Research, the company that conducted the survey. (But parents police the ultimate decision: Last Christmas, Metz nixed his 6-year-old’s desire to trade her Target gift card for Bratz dolls.)
It scares moms such as Pilar Guzman, editor in chief of Cookie, the style-conscious parenting magazine. “It’s part of a slightly depressing trend of over-consumerism among kids,” she says. Gift cards are practical for teens who “don’t want you picking out a Christmas sweater for them.”
But for the Elmo and Dora set, they represent a “tyranny of choice that robs kids of innocence. Where is that magical moment of opening a present?” Which is the other part of the problem, critics say: Those under 7 or 8 don’t understand economic empowerment or “delayed gratification,” says Dan Horne, a marketing professor at Providence College. If all a child receives is a stack of plastic, “I can see a kid being very disappointed.”
Retailers are trying to rectify the concerns by packaging gift cards with tangibles. This season, for example, Target offers an inflatable Santa, plush elephant and plastic Hello Kitty purse.
In April, Angela Langowski thought her husband’s 3-year-old niece, Samantha, would have a blast picking out something for her birthday at Toys “R” Us. Samantha lives in Texas, so “I have no clue what she has,” says Langowski, 44, a freelance editor in Littleton, Colo. But Samantha’s mom informed Langowski that “people who give gift cards lack imagination.”
She emphatically disagrees. “To me, it’s the spirit of giving.” If her nearly 3-year-old daughter, Emma, received one, “I wouldn’t be offended at all.”
Still, even though Langowski heard Samantha chose Legos and “loved” them, she’s playing it safe for Christmas: Samantha will be getting books.