They stack them from wrist to elbow, tiny pink and yellow and blue plastic bands shaped like zebras and pumpkins and spiders. They wrap them around their ankles and shoot them over one another’s heads. They wear ring-sized versions up and down their fingers — skiers and stars and apples.
Kids have gone crazy for Silly Bandz, and they wear them everywhere — except, in more and more cases, to school.
As the academic year gets underway, administrators across the country are banning the popular bands. The problem: Students talk about them from the morning bell to the end of recess, trade them in science class and show them off during math.
“What was happening is in the classroom itself, kids were more preoccupied with who they were going to trade with, and what they were going to trade, than the teacher teaching,” said Jonathan Wolfer, principal of Douglass Elementary School in Boulder. “We decided at a faculty meeting at the end of August. We had a consistent message that we have an electronics policy, where we ask kids to leave their iPods and cellphones at home, and we rolled the Silly Bandz into the same policy.”
Three middle schools and several elementary schools in Cherry Creek School District have axed the bracelets. In Denver Public Schools, at least one class in the district’s Center for Early Education has banned Silly Bandz. The principal at Mesa Elementary School in Boulder sent letters to parents asking them to keep their kids Silly Bandz-free during school hours. A school in Monument outlawed them outright.
Toy stores bask in craze
Reactions to Silly Bandz among Boulder principals varied, Boulder Valley School District spokesman Briggs Gamblin said.
“In some cases it’s not an issue; in others the issue has to do with the students spending too much time with them,” Gamblin said. “One principal said students were shooting them at each other, too busy trading them with each other, and worrying about them rather than exercising during gym class.”
Not all school officials, though, are sighing at the latest craze. In at least one Cherry Creek kindergarten class, the teacher is using the bands as a tool to help kids sound out words, spokeswoman Tustin Amole said.
For Diana Nelson, owner of Kazoo and Company Toy Store in Denver, Silly Bandz inspire at least two words: Thank you. Business has been good, she said.
“We need a trend,” she said. “The toy industry needs something fun.”
She started hearing about Silly Bandz last year, through toy-store owners on the East Coast who were the first to get caught up in Silly Bandz mania.
It wasn’t until April that Denver kids started asking about them in the store, and the craze grew steadily over the summer. Now the business is constant — between 20 and 25 sacks of Silly Bandz a day.
“I knew we had to order them,” she said. “If you wait, you can’t get the product. They are hard to keep in stock.”
Nelson said kids from kindergarten through high school buy them, wear them and trade them. A girl thing? Nelson said both genders collect them.
Part of the appeal, she said, has to do with their price — usually about $5 for a bag of 24 different bracelets.
“It’s an affordable, quick gift, in this economy,” she said.
Popularity boosted by visibility
There’s more than price, though, to the viral success of the multicolored bands. For one thing, the bracelets — which come in a wide variety of shapes, including one in the likeness of Justin Bieber — are made for trading, which fuels kids’ interest.
In addition, they aren’t hidden in a fourth-grader’s room, or stuck in the living room. Kids can show them off.
“Things that are more publicly visible are more likely to spread,” said Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business. “People tend to do things other people are doing. People imitate people around them.”
And with kids, he said, the urge to imitate is especially pronounced.
“Identity is really important to kids,” he said. “For kids, how other people see them is really important; they are defining who they are and what groups they belong to. Being on the cutting edge is really important.”
For now, at least, Silly Bandz are cutting- edge for a lot of kids.
Douglas Brown: 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
