Comment by Al-Khwarizmi
9 hours ago
I get piñatas, but there is an extreme version of this that I find just too much. Not sure in other places, but in Spain there is a kind of fair stall where children use a plastic fishing rod with a magnet or hook to catch some plastic ducks with the corresponding magnet or hook. The ducks have some points and give you rewards, but the payoff is terrible - maybe you spend €10 and you get a gift that you could buy for €2 at the neighborhood shops. And the fun part with the fishing lasts like 20 seconds, no more, and it's individual, there isn't even a competition or anything, no time limit, etc. Just catch three ducks and see how many points they give you.
My 7-year-old son (who by the way loves math) always wants to go there. I can't help but explain that the payoff is horrendous from any point of view, and he understands and doesn't argue against it, but he still insists. Sometimes I convince him by offering alternatives, but sometimes I have to cave because he seems to like it so much. But man, spending euros on that stings, I have the feeling that the people who run the stall must be laughing at all the suckers who fall into the trap.
It's the novelty and rarity. He wants an experience he can't have all the time.
It's banal to you as an adult, because it's not rare or new.
Adults do the same thing in more exotic and expensive contexts.
It's gambling. I think pretty much all carnival games work like that.
Fundamentally, doesn't gambling require a potential payout that is more valuable than the initial input? If you can only ever get less than you put in that's not really a gamble is it?
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My kids love something like this we see every year at the traveling fair. It's the same idea but with rubber duckies floating around and having to catch them with a small pole with a hook attached. It's €20 for 2 kids to have 2 minutes of fun and the payoff is a €1 Aliexpress/Temu pollution generator disguised as a toy. They play with it for a day before it ends up in the trash.
The first few years I hated this for exactly the reasons you mention, but now I'm just happy they are happy. I think I have a few more years left before they don't want to go rubber ducky fishing with their dad no more and I doubt by then €20 gets me 2 minutes of joy with them.
> It's €20 for 2 kids to have 2 minutes of fun […] They play with it for a day […]
Seems to me it's €20 for a day (8h? 16h?) of fun. That's not bad value: how much does a movie ticket cost for 2-3 hours?
In fact it's the same thing. I said fish by mistake (probably because my mind made an association with the fishing rod and what it's usually used for) but they're ducks. I have edited the comment now.
Don't overthink it, I think you are being a bit cynical. If your kid enjoys it then it's worth the money. If you can't afford that then find other things your kid enjoys.
The reward of a game is playing it, not the 'prize', although that can add to the enjoyment too.
As a parent you should absolutely think about what kind of expectations and behaviours you're setting up for the future if 'if they enjoy it then it's worth the money' is teaching kids. Sure it's not perfectly clear cut but not thinking about value at all does not end well.
Well, your child is spending 0€, getting a bit of fun with a game, and getting a reward afterwards, which is randomized (more dopamine). That seems like an amazing trade.
As an adult, if I went and they said it cost 0€, I think I'd play too.
It sounds like you've got an opportunity to set up something like this at home. You'd feel like you were getting ripped off less, and make the rewards at the fair seem less attractive to "what we have at home". The challenge, of course, is to still make it feel like a special occasion...
I think part of the thing is the scarcity of activities like this, having it for free at home will probably kill the mood.
It's like video game arcades. When you had to pay to play for 2 minutes, it was way more exciting than now playing in an emulator
Have you tried setting up a tub of water at home and gluing some magnets to some rubber ducks? When my son was 7 I would pay him his weekly allowance and he would get distracted and leave it on some random table and walk away. It's likely the act of fishing for ducks is more appealing in this instance than any potential ROI calculation.
It's called a profit deal [1].
People don't pay to get the crap, they pay to have a fun experience and get a memento of it.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE6Y3_EEXys&t=39s
In the UK this is called:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook-a-duck
> maybe you spend €10 and you get a gift that you could buy for €2
Oh yes, I got it, they are like the claw machines that have fake bills and iPhones with them (at least that's what I saw too).
But the point of having fun, you know it's a rigged game.
Different thing. The claw machine is basically gambling for kids. There is no skill involved.
Here there's no skill involved either. It's not that you have some time to catch as many ducks as possible and if you're good at it you catch more. It's that the 10 € give you the right to catch e.g. 3 ducks, so you spend the time that you need to catch 3 ducks (typically for a 7-year-old like 20 seconds, smaller kids take some more but still not long) and then you look at the score below the ducks, which is totally random. So yeah, quite similar to the claw machine although at least they don't have the farce that you could win an iPhone (Actually you can buy more ducks to get higher scores, so the prizes need to be linear. I have seen parents spend like €50 for their kid to get a toy that could be at most €10).
It's kinda like a slot machine. Or loot boxes. Kids love drugs too!
I would have killed to play carnival games like that when I was a kid but they were absolutely strictly forbidden, because 1) they are obviously not worth the price (scam) and 2) prizes are just junk that we didn't have room in the house for anyways.
You can just say no. I have never played a single one of those types of games in my life because once I was old enough to work I understood my parents point of view. I'm actually thankful for them teaching me these sorts of lessons no matter how much I hated at the time. It's actually okay to not allow your children participate in cons and scams.
is there a price or cost for happyness?
which lesson is it exactly?
1.) That gambling is not worth of money even if it is fun for a moment.
2.) Something being fun but expensive is skippable and it is good to be able to say "no" to expensive fun.
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