My daughter were going on and on about those webkinz. She had been playing with some friends and one of them had one (webkinz raccoon I think it was). She told me that the so called 'pet' was a toy that they took care of in a virtual world (not her words, think she said - A computer game with lots of other webkinzer's).

Well, I'm a careful parent and decided to check the phenomena out. I did this mostly because I belive that the internet isn't entirely good for children aged 5-12 because they are so easily influenced.

First of all I did a simple search for webkinz and found that there were a lot of those plush toys. In fact every animal imaginable was there in a minature version. They do not differ that much from any other plush toy, at least at first glance.

I learned that with every webkinz comes a secret code that gives you entrance to the Webkinz World. Ok, so what is this place? Is it just another one of those small promotional tricks made by manufacturers?

At this time I was ready to find purchase a webkinz for Ellen (my daughter) and so we did, she finally decided that she wanted the raccoon. Ellen was very happy and I was very curious to see what the webkinz world would add to this ordinary plush toy. Ellen corrected me...-This is not a toy! It is my new pet!

I started to realize what made those plush toys...ehh pets, so special. They are not promoted as toys but pets. Ok, what's the difference? Well, in my own opinion the difference is that a pet requires responsability, it needs to be taken care of and if you don't it will get sick and worst case scenario it'll die.

Holy cow, those guys over at Ganz Co. knew what they were doing when promoting it as a pet instead of promoting a toy.

The first time we connected to the webkinz world I understood that I would have to help Ellen finding out what to do and how to make your pet as comfortable and healthy as possible. After playing for a half an hour I found out the basics about this online world. First of all, you need to take good care of you new pet to keep it healthy and happy. You do this with several different kinds of actions in the webkinz world. You need a place for it to sleep, wash up and eat.

In this online world there are several ways to earn kinzcash. Ok, there is a monetary system too.

In conclusion, webkinz are a great way of learning your child responsability and a 'preview' of having a real pet. In the online world they learn that you can't have anything you want if you don't work on getting it. You could also talk and play with other webkinzers and the whole site is closely monitored by the Ganz company protecting your child/children.