Exchange value as pedagogy in children's leisure: Moral panics in children's culture at century's end

This article examines the relatively recent emergence of a new ethos of acq uisition for acquisition's sake in the practices of collecting and trading cards and plush toys purportedly manufdctured for children. I analyze publi c debates surrounding three fads in children's popular culture in the late 1990s: sports "chase" cards, Beanie Baby plush toys and Pokemon trading car ds. These crazes take the form of moral panics whereby sacred values are sa id to be threatened by the trading of these goods because of what they teac h. That is, "appropriate" play and use of these goods constitutes an exerci se in particular modes of seeing and relating to and in the world.