Webkinz

[gdobson]

My little girl says all the girls at school have webkins and she really wants one for Christmas. So I looked at them online, and they are cheap enough, but I am afraid that once she logs on to the webkinz website to activate her password and stuff, that I will have to pay some monthly bill or something - Is anyone familiar with these toys? They are very cute.

Thanks for any help.

Gina

[Fiddle-Faddle]

Nope, no monthly fees!!! (Unlike Club Penguin.)

[Darn210]

Webkinz expert here. Feel free to ask me any questions. When you register your Webkinz, you have access to your online world for one year. In order to extend your account, you need to buy another Webkinz and add it in. You can do this at anytime within the year and then you will have one year from the date that you adopted your last Webkinz. You can keep adding and adding . . . imagine that . . . there's NO LIMIT

I'm not sure where you live, but you may not need to order online. They usually sell for $10 for the small (lil kinz) and $12 for the large (which is still pretty small). If you get on their website (www.Webkinz.com) you will have access to a store locator and you can see if there is one within a reasonable drive.

Let me warn you . . . they're like Lay's Potato Chips . . .

[VegasCeliacBuckeye]

My niece LOVES webkinz.

For once she likes cheap toys...LOL

[Cam's Mom]

Hi!

We just discovered these... in fact they saved our Halloween. I bought each of the kids a Webkinz and they happily walked in the door from trick or treating and handed over their entire bucket of loot in exchange for the adorable animal!

No scrumping - no worries. Thanks Webkinz!! The computer side of it is another story, getting logged on and set up was a total pain in the computer land rump. But we finally got it set up and they played happily this afternoon with their new friends (and still no mention of candy!).

b.

[gdobson]

Awesome! Thanks guys. Looks like I can get her one (or more) of these without too much worry. Cute and don't cost much I have a friend who got sucked into that club penguin deal and I was afraid this would be another one of those.

Now I can start my Christmas shopping!

[Cheri A]

We just bought our dd her first webkinz last Thursday. She's been wanting one, so I asked her if she'd like to trade all of her Halloween candy for one too. She loves to shop, so we went and she picked an adorable little bunny. She named her "Candy". LOL! She's been happily playing with it on the computer too. I like that they can do some educational stuff on the site too.

[2Boys4Me]

Nope, no monthly fees!!! (Unlike Club Penguin.)

It used to be free until Disney bought it.

[buffettbride]

It used to be free until Disney bought it.

Do any of you worry about the chat features or anything? My husband and I are pretty strict about the "no chat" rule on the computer at our house.

What is the web safety like?

My daughter has 3 of them.

[Darn210]

They have two different options for chatting. The first which is used througout the majority of their site is strictly a pull down menu. If you are playing against an opponent in the tournament area, you can click a menu and select certain phrases like "Good shot" or "I'm really good at this" . . . that sort of thing. You can ask someone to be your friend (once again by selecting a button). They can say yes or no (by selecting a button). You can invite them to your Webkinz house. You can have additional conversation if they decide to visit like "What is your favorite Webkinz?" Everything in this area is strictly selecting something prewritten.

They have two chat areas . . . one is run just like above. You can only select a prewritten phrase/response.

The other area allows the kids to type in their questions. The parent has the ability to lock them out of that area with a password that the parent establishes. This is what we have done. My husband did read up on it a bit and found out the following: Any words that they type have to be in the OK'd list. So a child can't type in their own name because it's not one of the OK words. Kids won't be able to get pass a filter by substitutions (Like using $ instead of S or ! instead of I) since it's not run using a filter, it's run with a dictionary of allowable words.

[buffettbride]

Wow! Thanks!

That is exactly what I wanted to know!