Did your "mythical beast" enchant the Ultraman card?

● There are many minors who are addicted to collecting Ultraman cards, spending hundreds of dollars at a time, and some also steal money from their families or borrow money to buy cards, which makes some parents distressed

● The reason for the popularity of Ultraman cards in minors, in addition to the blind selection form, the temptation of rare collection, may also be related to the establishment of social relations between peer groups, minors through accumulation, exchange, gifts, etc., within a certain range to establish a common language, find new friendships

● At the institutional level, rules and red lines must be drawn for "blind boxes" and "card packs" with gambling nature. Parents should promptly discover and reasonably guide; regulatory authorities should punish shops that produce and sell "blind box" cards; schools should explicitly prohibit playing "blind box" cards

□ Chen Lei, all-media reporter of rule of law daily

□ trainee reporter Sun Tianjiao

At 5:30 p.m. on September 10, at the entrance of a primary school in Beijing's Chaoyang District, Li Lin, a Fifth Grade student who walked out of the school after school, quickly pulled up his mother, Ms. Mu, and ran excitedly to the nearby convenience market, came to a stationery stall, and skillfully picked up two packs of Ultraman cards. For 5 yuan per pack, Ms. Mu paid 10 yuan.

Before he could get out of the market, Li Lin tore open one of the card packs. "It's 'smashed' again, and there is not a good card." He flipped through it quickly and said to himself, and casually threw the card bag into the trash can next to him.

"My kids are obsessed with ultraman cards, pestering me every day to buy them, and now they've collected several volumes." Ms. Mu shook her head helplessly and told reporters.

There are many schoolchildren like Li Lin who are obsessed with Ultraman cards.

After the start of the new semester, the reporter of the Rule of Law Daily visited and found that many minors were addicted to collecting Ultraman cards, spending hundreds of thousands of yuan at any time, and some also stole money from their families or borrowed money to buy cards, and quarrels and even fights occurred from time to time because of the comparison of cards with classmates or in order to get each other's rare cards, which made some parents distressed.

Merchants are right next to the school gate

Students spend thousands of dollars to buy cards

Li Lin "Ka Ling" for 1 year, most of the Ultraman cards he collected were purchased at the stationery stall in the convenience market near the school.

Ms. Mu said that this summer, she took Li Lin back to her hometown, her son carried an Ultraman card book with him, usually in addition to running wildly with his friends, he was idle to look through the card book, while flipping through the name of Ultraman, "I can't remember the text, but I remember Ultraman's name very clearly."

In early August, due to the epidemic prevention and control school's recommendation that students return to Beijing in advance, Li Lin began to plan to buy Ultraman cards, and he had already bought cards three times in only two weeks after the start of school.

At the booth where Li Lin bought cards, the reporter saw that the shelves of this stall of only about 10 square meters were filled with all kinds of Ultraman cards, and the price of each package ranged from two or three yuan to thirty or fifty yuan.

Li Lin told reporters that there are 8 cards in the 5 yuan card bag he bought, and he did not know what kind of cards were inside before buying, just like drawing a "blind box", tearing open the card pack after purchase, may "smash", or may draw one or two "good cards".

The so-called "smashing", that is, the card bag is all ordinary cards, there are no rare cards, many students will throw these ordinary cards aside or directly throw them into the trash. The so-called "good card", that is, the rare card of the Ultraman card, such as the XR card (laser full star card), the SSR card (full star card), the HR card (upgraded 3D card) and so on.

Mr. Li said there were 36 people in his class, and at least half of them had bought or collected Ultraman cards, "which is the most cards." Ms. Mu told reporters that in just one year, Li Lin spent thousands of yuan on the Ultraman card.

The reporter asked about the sales of the store's cards, and the store said bluntly that "it sells very well, and the children like it."

The reporter visited the convenience markets and stationery stores near many schools in Chaoyang District, Haidian District, and Jizhou District of Tianjin City, and found that most of them were selling Ultraman cards, with prices ranging from a few yuan to tens of yuan. There is a stationery shop selling Ultraman cards even next to the entrance of the elementary school, and after school, many young boys pestered their parents to buy cards.

Primary schools in many places are popular for collecting cards

Parents don't know where the magic is

Li Lin learned to play football at an off-campus football club, and his teammate Zhao Meng, who lives in Beijing's Haidian district, is a fourth-year student at a primary school affiliated with a university. Zhao Meng has been "card age" for 3 years and has collected several card books, some of his cards are purchased from physical stores near the school, and some are purchased from online.

Among these Ultraman cards, Zhao Meng's favorite is a set of Ultraman Anniversary Edition cards. This is the reward given to him by his father after his team won the first place in a football game last winter.

Speaking of this set of cards, Zhao Meng talked about it - there are a total of 64 cards, divided into two kinds of packaging, one is a fixed bag, including 2 XR cards, 30 fixed cards; one is a supplementary pack, each pack has 2 XR/GP/LGR cards at random, UR, HR, SR cards 1 each, and R cards 3. In addition, the merchant comes with 1 card tile and a collection book.

Zhao Meng's father, Zhao Peng, told reporters that this set of cards was bought online for more than 350 yuan. He said that the child especially liked the Ultraman card, and he used the card as an incentive for the child to play a good ball, and the children cheered when they were taken apart.

The reporter logged on to the online shopping platform that Zhao Peng said, and saw various brands of Ultraman cards, of which a brand Ultraman card flagship store had 169,000 people paying attention, and there were more than 20 types of cards on sale. Some Ultraman complete sets of cards are priced at up to a few hundred yuan, and some explosive cards sell more than 200,000 yuan.

Seeing that Zhao Meng was now more and more addicted to Ultraman cards, Zhao Peng was a little worried.

In interviews, many parents said they couldn't understand why children would love Ultraman cards so much.

Ms. Mu said: "I don't think these cards have any value, I don't know where the magic of these cards is, but the children fiddle with them when they have time, and talk about the cards and flying eyebrows." ”

What makes Ms. Mu even more incomprehensible is that the soccer team where the child is located, everyone collects Ultraman cards. For a while, the players talked about cards between training, and the coach had to make a request, and then brought the cards to the training ground and confiscated them.

Not only in Beijing, according to public information, Ultraman cards have become popular among primary school students in many places. In February, ms. Liu's son in Qingdao, Shandong Province, spent more than 4,000 yuan on Ultraman cards in a short period of time; in August this year, a 7-year-old child in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, stole 2,500 yuan to buy Ultraman cards at home.

Mr. Shan, who lives in Jizhou District, Tianjin, said in an interview with reporters that his son Shan Xiao is in the fifth grade this year, and more than 30 of the 52 people in his class have bought card sets. Shan Xiao has more than 3 years of experience in buying cards, and almost every week he has to spend more than ten yuan to buy Ultraman cards.

Fight over card grabs

Parents complain about "playing crazy"

Seeing her son so obsessed with Ultraman cards, Ms. Mu began to limit his pocket money, but what happened next made her even more distressed.

During the summer vacation back to his hometown, grandpa gave Li Lin a 500 yuan gift to his one-year-old sister, and in the blink of an eye, Li Lin took 200 yuan from his sister. In order to save money to buy cards, Li Lin began to collect express cartons and plastic bottles at home, and then sold them as waste.

Zhao Meng's approach is to sell some duplicate cards to classmates and card friends.

Zhao Peng told reporters that recently his son Zhao Meng sold 4 cards to his classmates at a price of 30 yuan each, and after he knew it, he criticized him fiercely and asked him to return the money to his classmates, "If you let the parents of the other party know about this matter, you must not come to us?" How can this be the case at a young age?"

This is not the first time Zhao Meng has sold cards. At the beginning of this year, Zhao Meng spent 2.5 yuan to buy a card from a classmate and then resold it to another classmate for 5 yuan. Not long ago, he also transferred a card to a teammate of the team and collected 15 yuan from the other party.

Zhao Peng felt that there was not much money at that time, so he did not intervene in discipline, and he did not expect Zhao Meng to regard this as a business. Zhao Meng believes that the transfer of cards between classmates and teammates is your wish, which is beyond reproach.

Mr. Shan told reporters with concern that at his son's school, some primary school students borrowed money from their classmates to buy Ultraman cards, and even some primary school students saw that their classmates bought rare cards and directly grabbed them.

The fight occurred at the school gate, it was noon, in the commissary at the school gate, a male classmate drew a RARE UR card, another male classmate wanted, snatched it, and the result was that the two sides fought around the card.

"Play crazy." Mr. Shan described the state of some elementary school students playing Ultraman cards.

Ms. Mu agreed with this, and now Li Lin will take out the card book to read one by one as long as he has time, and he must also take it out to read it for a while when writing homework, even if he goes to school.

"What to do?" This is the voice of many parents.

(In the text, Li Lin, Zhao Meng, and Shan Xiao are pseudonyms)

Source: Rule of Law Daily - Legal Network