Experience the Joy of Giving Something Better!

TWICE over the past two weeks, I’ve been asked by a Dollar Tree cashier if I’d like to buy a toy for one dollar to donate to Operation Homefront. As you yourself would do – perhaps as you have done – both times I’ve said yes and the cashier has added the cost to my purchase.

Still, I’m left with the thought that these are Dollar Tree toys. Have you been through the toy aisle at Dollar Tree?

Look!  Look!

It’s almost all cheap plastic junk made in China, blister-packed to cards and hung on pegs. And at Dollar Tree, famously, “Everything’s A Dollar.” Whaddaya expect for a buck – a freakin’ Furby?!

These toys are going to the children of military families. Can’t we do any better than Dollar Tree toys?

I have an idea, Dollar Tree: Keep doing what you’re doing, sort of. Your heart is in the right place. Your cashers will continue to ask us if we want to purchase a toy for the child of a military family for a dollar, we’ll say yes, they’ll pick up some chintzy piece of crap from a basket on the counter there and drop it into the donation box. Fine.

Now here’s the trick: After the store closes each night, Dollar Tree, you have your people fish all that junk out of the donation box, put it all back in the basket on the register (so it’s ready for the next day), and then take all the money you collected for the purchase of these toys…and buy those kids something decent from Toys “R” Us!

Or if not Toys “R” Us, then Big Lots! Sheesh! It’s a step up, albeit a small one.

They’ve got all those Your First Babies that aren’t exactly flying off the shelves and are going to be headed to the Landfill of Misfit Toys if they don’t start moving soon.

Posted by Ted on December 6, 2012, 4:54 AM.