Marketing gone too far

As a kid, I remember first hating getting my school pictures taken, and later not being able to wait for the school pictures to be taken.  Now that I have three children in school... I loath their school photos.  Ok, let me clarify, I actually did like the first photos taken at the beginning of this year.  I thought the photography people did a nice job posing Taylor and Alivya, they paid attention to their hair,and they both had pretty decent smiles.  The smiles thing is no small task where Taylor in particular is concerned. Of course you have all seen his goofy smiles, so you already know that.  For their first picture day, I made sure they were bathed the night before, dressed in nice clothes, hair done...  we didn't really plan to buy any photos, but gussied them all up anyway.  And as I said, we were pleased, but we take really good photos of the kids every day.  Sure, we prefer not to pose the kids so having a photo where they are nicely posed and smiling is good. But I am not going to pay almost $15 for a photo that I think is "nice".  So we declined to purchase a package.  No big deal. 

Fast forward about two months, and the kids came home with two 3x5s and a couple smaller ones each.  There were no order forms, nothing... so I cut them up and gave them to their grand parents, aunts, uncles..

No big deal.

Then they came home with these little "ID cards" with their little picture on them.

Now I'm starting to get annoyed, not just because they keep sending this stuff home, but because they are also emailing me every other week... from my "school photographer"... AND because the kids are getting distraught.  All these freebies come with a catalog of some sort showing their gorgeous faces on all the "cool" things Mom and Dad can buy them.  With each new thing, the kids would get to them first, of course, then fawn over what they just "have" to have... and then get really upset when they realized that we were not "having" any of it.  At this point, this was also pretty minimal, so it was still just "annoying". 

Sometime in January they came home with an 8x10 class photo featuring the faces of all their little classmates... cute, not something I would pay for... and they did not ask me to... smart...

And the straw that broke the camels back? Yeah, that would be the second picture day... not retakes like we did when I was in grade school... took a picture, if it turned out bad, you got a retake and that was it... oh, no... this is "spring" picture day.  So I sent the kids clean, with brushed hair, and they wanted to wear his and her matching t-shirts... fine, whatever.  I knew I wasn't going to buy them...  well the famed "school photographer" had one more trick to pull out of his pocket.  This time, they sent their premiere package home with EVERY kid regardless of whether or not the parents ordered it. My THREE year old even got one... "If you don't want it, simply send it back to the school", or better yet, just send us check for $50. Sounds pretty simple right?  Yeah, no, my kindergartners were devastated when I told them that we were NOT keeping the bookmark, or the key chain, or the "privacy please" door hanger, or the calender, or any of the prints.  They thought we didn't "like" them... they don't understand that we have to "pay" for them.  To Taylor and Alivya, these were just more gifts from our friendly "school photographer".  They reluctantly brought them back to school, but a cruel lesson was learned.  People will prey on innocent children just to make a buck.  Those photographers are counting on your vulnerability to your children's pitiful pouts and whines to make the sale.  This can't be unethical, after all, the school enables them, somehow it must be educational.