Goody Bags
25 Jan
by noahvail
If you have small children, or frequent small children’s birthday parties (wtf?), you know the drill: At the end of the party everyone gets a goody bag. The goody bag is traditionally filled with stickers, cheap plastic toys, and if the kids are lucky, candy. Surely this custom began when a parent observed Little Sally crying about not getting a present at Little Timmy’s party. Forget that it was Little Timmy’s birthday, and not Little Sally’s—it was an injustice that needed correction!
While I’m too lazy to conduct actual research I’m pretty sure goody bags really took off in the 1980s and 1990s—which helps explain why young people act so entitled nowadays. They have been taught that every day is their special day, and that everyone gets presents always.
I have two small kids and lots of firsthand experience in this department. I have personally observed a much-older, probably uninvited sibling of a party guest break into tears over not getting a goody bag, and (semi-related) a new-to-me practice of busting open a piñata only to give the candy back to the host to have it redistributed in equal proportions.
But more importantly, I have had a hand (albeit a small one compared to my wife’s) in planning seven or eight birthday parties, and I can tell you this: party planning is hard, and often expensive, and goody bags are just one more goddamn thing that makes the endeavor stressful and not much fun for the hosts.
So let’s stop it with the goody bags. Please. Your kids can handle it, I promise.
AND FURTHERMORE:
I am sick and fucking tired of finding plastic whistles, tops, and other dollar store shit in every goddamn crevice of my house. PLUS, I have a giant bowl of sub-par candy that is left after the kids pick out the GOOD stuff (which accounts for about .3% of the candy in the bag in the first place). I’m going to build an addition to my house out of shitty bubble gum that loses it’s flavor in ten seconds and gross suckers that are crushed inside their packages. UGH.
AND FURTHERMORE, this whole thing about “everyone gets a goody bag” is also related to all the little league players getting trophies for 17th place, and now all these FUCKING social media games where you unlock achievements, because GOD HELP US scoring points in a game isn’t quite enough.
It’s been at least since the mid 90s — I worked at a children’s museum in the Pacific Northwest from 1995 to 1997, and we always put together goodie bags for kid’s parties. (Also balloons. Ah, helium. Those were the days.)
Although conversely, I don’t remember getting any from birthday parties I went to as a child in the early/mid-80s in southern California.
Yeah, I never got a goody bag in the 70s or early 80s when I was a kid, so I think you nailed it with circa mid-90s.
When I was a kid, you were lucky if you got a tootsie roll from the pinata instead of one of those gross orange candies that nobody wanted. And you had to be fast. There was no “redistributing”: it was every kid for him/herself! And we *liked* it!
On the bright side, I attended a piñata party recently where the kids made out like bandits.
Oh man, pinatas were the shizz when I was a kid.
Seriously. When did going to the kick-ass jumpy-house, play-with-your-friends, Chuck E Cheese party stop being the PRIZE? Why must we give children a prize for celebrating? We have got to start teaching our children to appreciate more.
I did goody bags one year. It cost me almost as much as the party. And one of the little brats actually looked at me and said, “Is this all?” I vowed then and there to fight the power.
AND, the crap that’s in them is always what I end up fishing out from under the seat when I’m vacuuming out my damn car at the car wash. Get off MY lawn.
Another reason I’m so happy not to have spawned. Wow, as expensive as the party!!!?
i remember ‘party favors,’ which sometimes were collected in a bag if i wanted to take home the paper horn or chinese yo-yo. yikes, is that un-PC? i don’t know what else to call it! but anyway we usually destroyed everything of value before the party ended.
I’m pretty sure the yo-yos, along with everything else, did, in fact, come from China, so you’re good.
Besides, they own all of our debt, so we work for them. And it’s okay to shake your fist at the boss every now and again.
Can I just tell you how much I hate all parts of the goodie bag??????? From the cost to the party thrower – to the waste of cheap worthless toys – to the stepping on one of these cheap toys in the middle of the night – to the buying more crap from China – to making sure you have one for each kid who rsvp’d AND all those who didn’t and just showed up!!!! Both as a giver of them and as a receiver of them — I HATE THEM!!!!!!
I could go off equally on giving mega amounts of presents to kids on their birthdays too, but I’ll hold off.
There are ways to celebrate an occasion without buying crap, y’all. I promise.
AND FURTHERMORE
Why don’t I have a freakin picture with my post?
I think the adults should get goodie bags filled with alcohol.
Yeah, little airline-size bottles.
I bet if we worked it right, we’d have a business right there.
We always have alcohol at my kid’s birthday parties. Beer & wine for the adults. It’s a MUST. The look of gratefulness that washes over the parent’s faces is PRICELESS.