Captain Obvious: Parents frequently bungle game gifts

My mother, without fail, would ask me to make my Christmas list every year. Like clockwork, she’d take it, go shopping, and more or less ignore it. I think it took a fit of hysterics at age seven or so to get her to finally listen to me. To her credit, she did take me to Toys R Us twice the day after Christmas to try to get a Power Glove that worked (little did I know it never worked in the first place).

 

Yahoo posted a bit today about how parents regularly screw up requests from their kids for games and consoles for Christmas.  According to a survey with Weekly Reader Research, 60% of kids expect to get a game they didn’t want or ask for. Grandparents also were expected to give wrong gifts (although you kind of expect that from grandparents, regardless).

 

I think I mostly got the game gifts I wanted because my parents let me pick them out myself, which is probably a good way for kids to avoid this problem. I do remember the year I got the Super Nintendo, my grandmother shipped my NES to my cousin without asking. In her mind, the SNES replaced the old console, so I didn’t need it anymore.

 

The Fresh Prince was so right.

 

[Thanks Justin!]