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Mom sells kids' toys on eBay as punishment

Posted: 18 Feb 2011 10:17 AM PST

By Athima Chansanchai

Used to be, kids were made to take a timeout when they acted up, or maybe even a spanking. But now, parents have other options, like selling their treasured toys on eBay as punishment.

One mom, fed up with her boys' fancy spinning tops and how they wrecked her bathtub, decided to gather the offending tops — the popular Japanese manga Beyblade toy — and put them on eBay. She even posted a picture of her sons, one clearly in tears, while the younger one has a mug shot look, resigned to his fate, as he holds up the zip lock bag of Beyblades to present to the buying public. (See image above.)

Live Poll

Would you punish your kids by selling their toys on eBay?

YES! They need to learn the lesson of never questioning authority and respecting property.
52%
NO! That is horrible parenting and will scar the child for life. It was my responsibility to supervise them.
35%
You people are all stupid, and I like taking time out of my day to comment on how stupid you are. Because I can.
13%

VoteTotal Votes: 12631

She put the picture and the toys on the auction site, attracting the attention of 4Chan, a community known for galvanizing quickly around a common cause. They ganged up on the hapless mom, daney21. The opening bid for the 8 toys was $69. With 4Chan in the mix, the bids soon rose to over $9,000, and finally to $999,999 before the auction was closed, most likely on daney21's request. She sent a message to one of the 4Chan bidders that shows her frustration and perhaps realization that she was being pursued by forces way beyond her comprehension: "Do you plan to pay over $9000.00 for the beyblades or is this a joke to you because this has been a problem all day and I am going to report to ebay."

A search for daney21 or her eBay Beyblades entry, which was posted in early February, came back with zero results.

We can't reprint what 4Chan users wrote, but here's a link to some of the screenshots taken by Urlesque.

No doubt, some of the attacks against her arose after reading her description of the sale:

We are selling 8 Beyblades, 2 of them light up. As you can tell they are not happy about this! They have been using their bathtub as a "battle arena" and Beyblades + Bathtub = Destruction!!! With the metal ones they managed to scrape the enamel off the tub, take a chunk of tub out and break off the soap holder. SO if you "win" this auction DON'T play with in a bathtub!!! We have recieved a quote of $500.00 to replace the tub, some tiles, and soap holder + labor of course! They had approxamently $125.67 in their piggy banks that will be going to toward the cost. We will use the profit from this auction towards the balance and then it is onto other toys!

So, rather than rewarding her boys for their ambition in creating a larger arena, she is not only taking money out of their piggy banks but also airing out some family disciplining issues on eBay and the Internet.

Now she's got her own entry in Encyclopedia Dramatica, which has basically branded her as a bad mom for life.

Before today, I'd never even heard of Beyblades, so I checked out what they were on the official Beyblades site and video. But they're familiar to my friends who are parents to young boys, and I saw some in action through YouTube:

So, they're really fancy spinning tops, with parts you can assemble. That correspond with a show, games and characters. Okkkkk. But I could see how they'd give hours of fun to a 4-year-old (or 6, or 8 and maybe even some adults), and could result in some epic battles.

I wonder, did daney21 read the instructions to her kids, which make it clear the toys aren't supposed to go beyond the arena? How long had they been playing in the tub? Where was she? We can't imagine she didn't hear that kind of ruckus.

Maybe she should have taken a timeout before putting this out there for the world to see.

More stories about parents, kids and technology:

Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai,who would not put toys on eBay as punishment.

Kids Games

Saturday, February 19, 2011