In The Powder Room

There is one particular cartoon character who appears to be eating the world. Well... That might be an exaggeration. Not the whole world. Just a massive hole in my hip pocket where I used to keep some cash.

If I'm honest, it's not just this cartoon character, so I won't name and shame him - although he's been doing it for longer than most cartoon characters and children's entertainment franchises. They work on the power of peer pressure and pester power to manipulate little sugar-driven minds and drive parents into early wrinkles.

I'm up on my milk crate about this one after my children and I went partying at a big, mass-produced and driven, franchise based kid's concert recently. My kids loved it. I thought it was okay too - it only went for an hour, and I dig that in a kid's concert. It's a memory they'll keep forever and such a good experience and blah blah blah...

No, actually...fucking expensive is what it was.

I can handle the slightly exorbitant ticket prices - at one hundred and thirty (Aussie) bucks for a family pass, that's acceptable. It's the ridiculous overpriced food and merchandise that pisses me off.

Thirty dollars for what was essentially a plastic baton with a mirror ball and a few fairy lights that spun so fast I thought my kid was going to lose an eye. Eight dollars for a mouse-sized slurpee, an extra seven dollars if you want the novelty cup too (which, of course, your child does. Obviously).

And... this, ladies, is the bit that really gets my blood boiling...

$15 for a bag of fairy floss.

$15. Australian. Which is also fifteen dollars American, about ten pound, seventeen Euro or five Gringott's galleons.

I don't care what you convert it to, fifteen bucks for a bag of spun sugar with food colouring added is highway robbery.

But, really, when bringing your own food and drinks into the venue is against the rules, what else do you do? (Besides smuggle in two water bottles and a few packets of chips?)

While some parents with less respect for the authority of their local concert centre - certainly not me - may get away with concealing contraband food and drinks under a pile of coats in their oversized bag and distracting the security searches with over-hyped misbehaving children; there is no smuggling in toys. A flashing, colourful stall packed with people displays dolls and soft toys, swords and flags, bags and neon lights. Vendors roam the aisles at intermission selling the same, and even when you've exited the doors and think you've escaped there are more of them, selling helium balloons that will soon float away and simple, twenty page colouring in books for ten dollars.

It's the ultimate in marketing psychology- kids are excited and in awe after seeing their heroes live, and every single other child in the venue seems to have something overpriced and appealing in their hands as they leave. Parents are tired and frazzled and just want to get the hell out of their without any major meltdowns. So they are likely to pay whatever is asked of them with little hesitation.

​It's a modern evil. Cute cartoon entities taking over the world... one parental dollar at a time.