But the brilliant part is that they aren’t selling this shit to kids, they are selling it to parents and there’s an extra dynamic of parent trying to make kid happy and kid probably picking up on that and acting happy to please the parent, resulting in the parent buying it more times when neither of them really care about it.

It’s insidious and reminds me of those car commercials where they are marketing “a new car will make your teenagers want to spend time with the family instead of their friends” instead of trying to sell the car itself.