Saturday, August 2, 2008

I Heart Hate Webkinz

I did a bad, bad thing. Last weekend our county's Foster Parent Association had a summer picnic complete with games, face painting, food, snacks, the works. One of the games gave Webkinz stuffed animals away as prizes. With one glaring omission. These Webkinz had no secret code attached to them. Sigh...

My kids live on the planet Earth and know exactly the power a Webkinz holds and have wanted them for a while. I have happily resisted and they did not seem too traumatized by that decision. Until someone gave them one without a "secret code". That's like giving a kid an empty Christmas stocking. Kind of.

Due to the fact that they had been so amazing at helping me with "Tia", our respite baby, I had decided to buy them something special. So I relented and scoured the web for the cheapest Webkinz I could find. After 3 agonizingly long days, Amazon finally delivered our new additions. I hate them.

With a Webkinz comes the aforementioned "secret code". You log on, enter your code, adopt your new pet and you are off! You get "Kinzcash" to buy things to deck out your animal's virtual room and to feed and care for it. Very Sims like. Except you run out of cash quickly and have to play games to get more. Not a problem, we just limit how many minutes a day the kids are allowed to play on Webkinz.com. They earn whatever they can within that alloted time limit.

I, on the other hand, spent three hours last night playing a version of solitaire to get enough cash for C'sa's pet to have a toilet and a sink. This is going to be a problem...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Webkinz is sort of like the facebook addition with have only for kids :)

Shanna said...

I spent a week "showing the kids how to play" Webkinz and "making sure they didn't waste their cash" ;-) I finally decided I had to let it go. I can always see the computer while the kids are using it, but I never go near it when they're playing Webkinz...too tempting!

Susie said...

Good luck! Our one Webkinz account was absorbed, or "hacked" as they call it, and there's no way to get it back. We were so disappointed that we swore off of them. And there's no customer service number to help. Sad, I think. :o( I know we had a VERY disappointed girl in our house. She never even got to play with it. At least yours worked.

Laura said...

LOL! Secondo LOVES Webkinz. I don't get it, but she's happy (Primo has an accound, too, and Terzo wants one, but Secondo is hooked). I refuse to help them though... to addicting. LOL!

Our kids have been warned though that they are toys with an expiration date. We are not paying to extend the free first year. They may if they save up the money, but we're not guaranteeing anything after the first year.

Samantha from Colonial Curve Cottage said...

I'm in webkins world too after a long and delayed entry, we're here. I was reluctant at first, but this is what's happened. My oldest daughter and youngest son, work together and speak in such loving and encouraging tones, reminding each other to check certain things at certain times and if one is away, will you go on for me? type of things. Here's the reality...the first few days they were on a lot, I said nothing. We don't live our lives around tv programs coming on at a certain time so we aren't doing it with webkins either. But, cool thing is, they've limited themselves. They know there are way more things to do in a day, but on a rainy day, well...I don't police them. I've let them spend hours on it and hear them say, I can't believe I spent that long on there...they realized afterward to limit themselves and they do. So, limits yes, policing no, learning to control their own time on webkins, priceless!