Per the link, an 11 yo has forty of the things!

As for the professional spoilsport, aka therapist, you've still got a stuffed toy even if you don't ever buy another one. Bet she found something to criticize about beanie babies, too.

I'm sorry, yes she is a spoilsport. It's just that the idea of a toy that dies gave me such a good laugh I just had to share.

Beth Roman has never paid a vet bill.

The only thing that expires after a year is access to the website where you can interact with your virtual pet (one for each Webkinz you buy). My guess is that if you can afford to buy your child the first one, another in a year won't be that difficult...unless you look on eBay. Due to supply problems and because there are some limited editions, the prices there can be pretty steep.

The pets do get sick if you don't play with them daily but if you miss a few days they recover quickly once you're back.

I see it as a relatively safe place for kids to play online. Kids can interact with each other but in a controlled manner.

My daughter has several of them. She also has some ShiningStars (a competing brand without the supply problems).

Somebody gave my nephew one of those tami-things when they first came out years ago. His goal was to see how fast he could make it die. Sick little bugger, but very funny when he got his female cousins all wound up telling them how he starved it to death.

Why, when I was a kid, we were so poor ...

But I'm sure you know the rest of the joke.

Maybe I'm just old and cranky, but it seems to me that back in the day, our toys actually, y'know, DID THINGS. They weren't just one half teddy bear - one half post-modernist abstract construct, like these things. I'm talking Hot Wheels, G.I. Joe, or the mysteriously unobtainable Johnny Seven O.M.A..

I still have fond memories of the cool stuff we had (and didn't have) back then. It's hard to imagine a kid these days looking back as an adult and having misty feelings for some "virtual pet" they once had on the Internet, much less be traumatized by its "death".

Hell, our G.I. Joes met many a gory and glorious demise, like the true patriot he was. However, toward the end, I think he became bitter when we equipped him with a prescient version of what would nowadays be known as a "suicide vest", fashioned from some lady-finger firecrackers and a piece of masking tape.

Somehow I know G.I. Jihadi Joe is up there with his seventy virgin Barbies, smiling happily. I find comfort in that.

Y'all are too funny. Maybe it would help if the company let the child know beforehand that money was due? It works well for the Cosa Nostra.

While I feel sorry for poor dead Jihadi Joe, none of y'all have suffered the trauma I have: I grew up playing with spools of thread. I saw my toys die every time Atropos broke out the Singer.