Childhood Gambling

Once you turn eighteen in the US you are legally allowed to gamble. Gambling comes in all forms, but a popular form is Scratch off tickets. These tickets produced by the state lottery can range in price from 1$ up to 30$, and winnings can range from $1 to Thousands. Odds are slim but that doesn’t stop people from contributing millions of dollars per year to these little pieces of paper. I’m guilty too; my fiancé calls lottery tickets “Stupid tax.” Although frivolous and often wasteful, they can be fun and sometimes extremely addicting.

These days there are new forms of what I consider “gambling” and they are targeted towards young children. One of my favorite Youtubers, Graveyardgirl (Bunny Meyer) has done a few episodes on her channel unboxing Shopkins. Shopkins are little figurines with no worth, just collector’s items with cute names and equally adorable design. They follow the theme of supermarket products, clothing items, and every day tools; cookies, pencils, boots, hats, and vegetables. After looking at the website there is said to be 3 series and 115 figurines all together.

The main way to buy these products is in what they call “Blind Baskets” each basket has two figurines that are sealed in yellow plastic so they are a complete surprise until purchased and opened. As it could be guessed there is no science to getting all different figures, duplicates happen. Another issues is that there are various figurines that are considered rare (harder to come by) which result in more purchases in hopes to collect them all!

I did some math and figured what it costs per figurine. I looked up the price from target and they retail for 2.99 per basket (3.20 with tax in the state of Indiana). So this comes down to 1.60 per figure and all 115 figurines, assuming you get no duplicates, is 368 dollars. As mentioned these things have ZERO worth just fun for collecting. In my opinion they are the equivalent of a scratch off ticket. If you get a duplicate its like a losing ticket, and getting a rare item is that of winning some significant some of cash. It the end, it is all a gamble.

Although I’m not of some odd religion where I see gambling as sinful and work of the devil, I feel that it is important to understand the possibilities that these fun collectors games are similar to those of betting. It could be concluded that these tendencies in young children could create the need to wager money in the future when the prize may not always be so tangible. Over all, its just an opinion and I don’t judge anyone who participates, this is simply and observation.