An open letter to the makers of kids stuff

Dear Maker of Kid Stuff:

I know we have never met formally, but over the last several months you have been a serious thorn in my side.

Lets start this discussion with a terrible event that occurred about 4 months ago. My kids begged and pleaded and begged some more for these text messengers. With all the lovely fundraisers that happen at school with the promises of big winnings (junky toys and the like) if you sell the most wrapping paper or chocolate bars, my boys had seen these text messengers often. Not being good sales people (and having parents that won't take the junk to work and sell for them) they kept falling short of being the "big winner" at school. Maybe you could say it was our parental guilt for not having helped them sell a ton of this junk to our friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers that caused the moment of weakness, but we all piled in the car one evening and drove to our closest Toys-R-Us store and picked out the text messengers for a small price of $25.00. These are the junkiest and most cheaply made things I have ever spent $25 bucks on (and when I say "I" I really mean my innocent kids; my husband and I only agreed to let them buy them if they spent their saved up allowance! More parental guilt now.) These text messengers only work if you are standing within 4 feet of the other unit and both units are pointed at each other. Seriously? Seriously. I would have expected this from a dollar store item, but not a well known toy store.

More recently, we allowed the boys to once again use their hard earned allowance money to buy a digital camera. These cameras proudly advertised on the packaging how you could take up to 152 pictures and then play games with your photos and make jigsaw puzzles from these photos. Guess what you Makers of Kid Stuff, you can, more accurately, only take about 100 photos and that is if you set the resolution to "Lo", which translates to fuzzy, crappy pictures that are not worth saving. For the better resolution (and I use that term very loosely) you can only get 20 pictures before you must download to the computer. These cameras were only $12 dollars, but still, my kids expected so much more for what they paid for. I guess you Makers of Kid Stuff might say it is a lesson well learned, but you didn't have to see their sad little faces when the cameras did not live up to their expectations. We bought these cameras just before a camping trip and they couldn't even use them. Highly disappointing for us all! Again I tell you, that we would have expected this poor quality from a dollar store item.

How can you sleep at night knowing that there are thousands of children highly disappointed in the product you so sloppily make and advertise gearing it towards young children. I am sick of being the "bad guy" always telling my kids "no" because they don't understand that this stuff is junk and the ol' saying "You get what you pay for" doesn't necessarily apply here. The kids are spending a decent amount of money (especially for a kid who only gets $3-$4 a week in allowance) and getting junk that doesn't live up to it's colorful advertising.

So, I would appreciate you either making the product more worth the amount spent (for example, making the text messengers $5 bucks instead of $25 and those cameras were really worth more like $5 also, not $12) or improve the quality of the product for the amount of money charged!

Thank you for your time, of which you must have a lot because you certainly aren't spending the time in making good, quality items for children.

Sincerely,
A mom who is fed up