I was a defense attorney at exchange city. The judge quickly realized her salary was paid by fines and decided to find everyone guilty. My salary as defense counsel was also paid by fines so I just stopped trying. I’m an attorney now.
Every single commenter with a story about being involved in the kid legal system leads me to believe that the people who designed that aspect of the parks had some, uh, *interesting* thoughts about what they wanted to impart on kids about criminal justice.
@@Zizhou hanlons razor. They probably weren’t trying to impart anything and were just being lazy and implementing things in the easiest way possible. That being said it reflects reality when you see police departments turning into traffic ticketing machines that not only find their own operations, but sometimes the entire operations of small towns as well.
The mock 'bad luck' card for the terrorist attack is so f-ckking funny. "The American way of life has been threatened once more. Please rebudget." Goddamn.
As someone who grew up visiting the original Kid City in Mexico this sure does take me back to the time were I went to court for "messing up some flowers" and I ended up bribing the judge with a nestle chocolate.
@@vercoda9997 ey at least you run.. pretty sure most regular workers crawl on the floor - with around 1/10th of the money you bring home non the less. Cry harder.
As a manager, I can confirm I'm pretty lazy myself and the people I manage do the heavy lifting, however not everyone can manage people good, I always put my people first and do everything in my reach to make their work less miserable every day
I was the Mayor of Enterprise Village. I had to wear a suit & give a speech at the beginning of the day but after that it was just me & my municipal underlings hanging out, ambling around town & spending my undeservedly high salary on McDonalds fries. I learned 2 important lessons that day: the people at the top don't really have to work at all & misappropriating taxpayer money is easy & fun
if my man defunctland was the mayor he would've brought up the local GDP by 200%, he is an uncorruptible individual who cares not about the delicious lure of McDonald's fries only for $1 at any participating location, but for the wellbeing of his constituents
This is how I felt scoring a manager job in the arts & crafts store. I had a great salary, but no time to spend it and all I was allowed to do was sit there and watch the other kids do the fun creative stuff.
I also was mayor for enterprise village in 5th grade. They wanted me to write and give my own speech at the end of the day, but I think they skipped it because it was getting late, which was lucky for me because I wrote three words on the computer they gave me. But for the entire day, they wanted me to give out shopping bags to everyone in the school that was in 5th grade to give me some this to do, because they didn’t have anything else to do. Once I visited about three people were giving their bags, my kids brain decided that “this is boring, imma chill in my office.” So I did nothing but sit in my office, and when I got paid I bought chicken nuggets and fries, and just sat in the little McDonald’s eating my food. When we left, they had a bunch of burgers and food left over in the front seat, and one of the teachers just gave them out to students. I ate about 2 before I stopped eating. Oh, and I wasn’t elected to be mayor, I kinda went to the teacher that was assigning roles to the government officials, and I said “hey, I’ll just be the mayor!” And the teacher was just like, “okay!” So while everyone worked, I just sat on my ass and ate chicken nuggets.
all I really remember about my biztown experience was that I REALLY REALLY DESPERATELY wanted to be mayor. I put so much thought into a campaign slogan, how I would market myself as what biztown needed, how I needed to put together a speech that balanced business with emotion; how I planned to *win the hearts* of my potential voter base. I labored over my speech for days, crying at the kitchen table because I would much rather be drawing my warrior cats ocs than writing an optional essay. but eventually, I was ready. I gave my speech with as much emotion as I could muster, keeping all of my dad's public speaking lessons in mind. in a way, it felt like he was there with me, guiding my mouth to say the right things at the right moments to capture the audience. I walked back to my seat afterwards, feeling like I had conquered the biggest challenge I'd ever had to face in my fifth grade life. fantasies swirled in my head of how I would foster a legacy during my term as biztown's greatest mayor. I was SURE I would win. I lost to a girl who promised everyone she'd do the chicken dance if they voted for her
I feel you!! Although it's a little different for me. I ended up winning the mayoral election for BizTown, and I was so happy. I was going to be the mayor of at least 4 classes! But of COURSE something had to go wrong. The entire year I hadn't gotten sick. I felt it the week before the trip to BizTown, and I even remember saying to my teacher: "I'm gonna get sick next week aren't I." Lo and behold, the week of BizTown, I come down with the flu and can't even attend the school days prior to the trip. I tried going in the day before, but all my friends said I looked pale as a ghost, and I sure felt it. Ended up spending what would've been an amazing day, on the couch playing clash of clans and throwing up. All my friends returned and told me about how much fun they had. I still resent that week for having such a once-in-a-lifetime experience taken from me just because of some dumb flu 😭
Me too! I used to rob the spare bank and sometimes and once a kid cop came in to do an unrelated investigation and caught me! He tackled me and took me to jail lol
Hearing about the kids performing bank robberies, writing bad checks, kidnapping babies from the hospital and putting kids in jail because it was “fun to break” was unironically one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long time.
Teach kids how to be adults, kids discover the benefits of crime. Yeah, seems like the inevitable result of the set up. And unfortunately you can't exactly simulate jail time within the park, even with a time-out jail, because parents can just bail the lid out and go home, even a ban from the park(temporary or permanent) isn't the same...
My brother and I ended up in jail when we visited La Ciudad de los Niños. I can't quite remember what we did, I believe we had a car accident or something like that, but jail was fun 😂. They took a picture of us while in "jail" and we were smiling like a pair of fools, loving the experience, lol.
@@RipOffProductionsLLC going to jail at La Ciudad de los Niños wasn't necessarily a punishment type of situation, you could end up in "jail" by accidentally doing things that would put you in jail in real life, such as having a car accident. My brother and I were put in jail when we visited the park but we weren't misbehaving, nor were we banned from the venue.
fun fact! the stanford prison experiment was a scam! the student who was warden basically moulded the guards into being assholes. The doctor was taking the especially cruel "guards" aside and told them they were doing a good job, they were actively encouraging the guards to do the kind of stuff that the "results" of the experiment insisted happened organically.
If you've ever heard little kids play especially little girls it's not that shocking tbh. I'm just glad that my two youngest nieces aren't at the wife beaters and orgies stage of playing Barbie😂
I had the privilege of going to one of these make-believe towns my fifth grade year as well. I had the job of “security supervisor”, which had THE MOST BORING PAPERWORK AND HOMEWORK OUT OF ALL OF THE JOBS. But I arrived at the city that day, and I was led to a room with a bunch of screens showing footage throughout the entire city. I basically got to spy on my classmates the entire day. It was AMAZING.
What did those kids do for us? Nothing. But Kevin provided more than an hour of entertainment with this video alone. Vote for Kevin. Make the right choice.
@@loduca16people are always so quick to dismiss an event strictly because the individual personally believes it’s “too good to be true” - but is it so hard to believe the commenter in this situation?
@@requiemthethethe It's just ignorant zoomer kids. They think everything that happened before them was fake and a lie because social media and tiktok has trained them to think that way.
@@MrWolfSnack could just your typical plastic bag on the sidewalk troll in a desperate attempt to grab likes in a room they failed to read. Either way youtube comments are youtube comments. No need to take serioisly. 😅
@therranolleo468 I’m 25 and I’ve been re-watching clips from Spongebob lately. The clip where he hits his toe (claw?) on the rock and starts swearing is so relatable as an adult. I can’t wait to have kids just so I can show them Spongebob.
I lived in Mexico City during a few years and my parents brought me once with a friend to the original Ciudad de los Niños. Our first stop, the hospital. The moment I stepped out I just started vomiting. That was the time I knew I wouldn’t be a doctor… Then we approached the plane! They had little simulators which was where you actually did something, but the actual cockpit (since it was a section of a real aircraft) was not used. However, since we were 4 years old, we didn’t know how on earth to fly in the simulator so they brought us to the cockpit (which had no screens or anything) and we just let our imagination drive us. I’m now an aeronautical engineering student!
I remember Exchange City. I had to take a job at a store that made toy reindeers that were essentially just a styrofoam ball on the end of a wooden dowel. There were like 6 of us working the shop and for some reason we had such high demand that we couldn't make these things fast enough. Then I got off work and immediatly got arrested because I accidentally stepped on a carpet square that we were supposed to pretend was a 'flower bed.' Then the cop also accidentally stepped on the flowers as he walked over to cuff me, so we agreed not to tell on each other and went our separate ways. 10/10 would blackmail the Exchange City Police again
“The park is now overrun with miniature graffiti, tiny debris, and child-sized collapsing infrastructure” Poetry. Stuff like that and your restraint in not referencing Kirk Milhouse’s race car bed with the guy who bought the airplane are why you’re one of the best writers on this platform.
Not the crossover I expected to see but where else would Geoff have learned the business acumen to launch and run Chez Garbage if not Exchange City. Maybe he even sold keychains with men in them?
Seriously!! That made me laugh so hard. Especially because most adults are so condescending to children, but those little bastards are astute as hell as long as they get something out of it. That’s why incentivized discipline is the best way to raise a kid… I’ll bet.
42:50 this is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Imagine you’re an adult staff member and you’re helping the kids play nurse. Then another kid runs in and kidnaps the baby dolls 😭😭😭
I went to one of these as a kid during a school field trip. I was bored out of my mind while also being extremely stressed because no one really explained to me what I was supposed to be doing. I got assigned as a "manager" and was never told what such a job entailed, and then my teacher scolded me for not scheduling my own lunch break, which included my actual real life lunchtime, which I didnt even realize was intergrated into the role play crap until after all the other kids had eaten and I was left sitting alone and hungry and still wondering wtf was going on. I even asked for help, asked a teacher to explain things to me, and what I got was a grownass adult belittling me for not understanding how to schedule breaks or write paychecks. You know, as a 7 year old. In a pretend job. That I had no previous knowledge of. Horrible experience, truly.
As a lot of the other commenters have noted, the best part of the video was the quotes from the kids. "And for all you girls out there, We have keychains with pictures of MEN in them." The full capital MEN kills me 😅😅😅 😂😂😂
That part made me cackle. The correct answer is that this kid is going to defraud his investors, go to jail after the humiliating public scandal, write a best selling book on the ordeal (which is then adapted into a film starring Matthew McConaghey), and become rich again doing keynote speaking gigs for Fortune 500 companies after the success of his Ted Talk.
So many great lines from these children. “Business is pretty lousy… I’m worried about the bank loan.” “These men are handsome and they’re in our keychains.”
This video is so nostalgic for me. I used to love getting arrested and then squeezing through the soft rubber prison bars to escape and get arrested again.
I was a savings officer at Chase bank at JA Biztown, and I left the place crying because I was so stressed out. Everyone had to cash in their checks through me to do anything with their money so I constantly had a line of kids I had to help the entire day. I never got to take a break or use any of my own money I made working. Made me never want to work at a bank when I grew up😅
I went to finance park as a kid and still have distinct memories of sitting over a table stressing about trying to make a budget with my mediocre paycheck and all my bills
-Those US size comparisons that aren't familiar/intuitive to some people outside the US 2000s Documentary: "Wow, the [large object] is as tall as THREE Statues of Liberty!" Kid me, who has never even set foot in the western hemisphere: "Ok, how big is that" Trivia book: "The Megalodon was as long as a schoolbus!" (In my country schoolbuses aren't those big yellow vehicles; they're commonly just vans)
@@vitoc8454absolutely same. Our school buses could fit like 10 kids, so even if only have of us went to swimming, at least two had to ride with the teacher lol But, given how much estimates of the megalodon‘s actual size differ, school buses with their varying lengths around the globe might not even be the worst comparison lol
I don’t know why this whole concept is so funny to me. Like just some kid sitting around and being like “ah damn Billy over at the bank is really fucking me with these fees” and they’re both like 6 😂
Yes, many of the kids testimonials were hilarious! My favorite was the kid who was like, “This job [as a lawyer is easy]! All you do is ask them if they can prove it!” lol
I did JA BizTown in Clinton, Tennessee in 5th grade, and I took one main thing away. Before going to BizTown, every student in our grade had to take a test (I think it related primarily to economics). It turns out the higher score, the better the job. So when we took our field trip there, the smarter kids got nice jobs being executives at places like the bank (I was VP), while the kids who struggled more were given jobs at places like the gas station. It just felt like enforcing a barrier between kids considered smart and not smart. That still does not sit right with me
I remember going with my brother to kidzania. We thought all activities costed money like Domino's pizza, and we ran out of money, not knowing where to get more money, we hung out in the Cheeto's sewers and were basically homeless
I remember when I went (around 2013-14?) my cousin managed to get a driver's license there and we ended up passing a really realistic looking car crash and there were even kids doing a news report on it.
I volunteered at Finance Park through work. Best interaction with a kid was when I was teaching him about home insurance, and he asked "When people say they're going to burn the house down for the insurance money, is this what they're talking about?" Made my day, that did.
Man I miss working with kids. No one with a fully developed brain is ever as funny as a kid. One time one of the kids at a summer camp I worked at was sitting next to a male councilor and started stroking his (admittedly thick) arm hair and asked “do you like your fur?” And I couldn’t breathe for about three minutes
@@Oli.V That is absolutely hilarious. Something about the lack of social awareness morphing with razor-sharp observational skills. Creating the funniest off-the-cuff comments! Thanks for sharing
It's the best! I taught pre-k and overheard two kids playing house. Kid 1 asks Kid 2 if he wants anything from the kitchen. Kid 2 asks "Do you got any smokes?" (!!) Kid 1 has no idea what that means and responses "No, there's no fires here, just ice cream." XD
I had never even heard of "kid cities" until I watched this video. I found myself thinking, how could I have completely missed out on what was apparently a formative experience for so many kids and both a lucrative business? And then I realized that the rise and fall of them happened entirely after I was already a working adult. I feel so old now.
Even if it was 15-45 minutes then switch to a different job through the day, I’d be thrilled. My ADHD brain struggles with focusing on the same task for too long. It’s even harder in loud, chaotic environments.
@@Annie_Annie__ No one is really stopping you from asking like 5 different employers to work for an hour a day. You just would have to be really good and also be able to convince all those employers that you'd be amazing at that job in the short time you're there everyday.
"Nestle, who sponsored La Cuidad De Los Ninos, was a perfect fit for the kid city, because they have a long history of relying on children to make their chocolate." I was not expecting that level of savagery to just be casually thrown in there.
As someone who visited Wannado City frequently, this video brings back SO many memories that I had long forgotten about. I still have photos from inside Wannado City with me and my neighbors at the time. I remember so vividly having so much fun! To this day, I still talk to my close friends about Wannado City, and many of them have fond memories as well. Thank you for bringing my childhood back so I can relive the memories.
The main thing this impresses on me is that if you give a child adult responsibilities, they will very quickly adopt adult solutions to meet those responsibilities. For better or for worse.
Exchange City was the most memorable part of elementary school. I worked as an account for a customer-facing store. My office was the size of a broom closet and had a crappy desk, a calculator, and a massive log of expenses I had to balance. I was given so much work that I didn't get to experience anything, spend any money, and missed half of my lunch. The deli ran out of food and closed down before I could get to it. I spent the rest of the day crying and thinking I was going to starve to death. They didn't even come to tell me it was time to leave - I only figured it out when all the lights turned off, and by then everybody was already in the parking lot. It was very immersive and really prepared me for adulthood.
God I remember Exchange City like a repressed memory. I think I remember my year that someone’s older brother had found out the “hack” of how to make the most (printing a ton of fake money slips and the stuff that said you did a job) and then told my classmate, so by the time it was our grade’s turn we were flooding the market with way too much cash that the older brother had basically handed to our grade. So bad that we basically created mass inflation and sandwiches were our new currency. So the economic lesson we learned was “nepotism is alive and well” and “When you overprint money, a 10-piece McNugget is the best payment”.
I went there in the year 2000, it was awesome and since it was a school day it was mostly empty. One thing to note is that, back then, when you "entered" you actually had to sit in the plane and play a 3D flight simulator where you flew the plane and landed it in the city, afterwards you came down and actually entered the city.
Quotes of children innocently realizing stark and harsh realities about being an adult but not really understanding what they’ve stumbled upon yet is some of my favorite content out there. This is the best episode of this show ever.
Its a good episode but my favorite episode from kevin is absolutely the history of the fastpass. It's easily my favorite video essay on the whole site.
I agree about the fastpass episode. It's so well written, playing out so well narratively. That essay was a better story than many recent movies I've seen
@@Sirliam95 I just gave a recommendation to my brother. The way I describe it is that the Fastpass video is just _"The Fastpass video"_ and it stands alone on its own, it's Defunctland doing a proper serious documentary deserving of industry awards. Same with the Disney Channel Theme video. This one competes with the Coney Island video for the best "fun Defunctland" video, still educational but the meat of it is in all of the amazing quotes coming out of it.
I would kill for a full-length documentary on the kid city crime sprees. Also, wild how kid cop corruption so closely mirrors real cops. There's some interesting psychology there.
I feel they saw cops doing that and thought that was normal. I mean, I definitely thought that way when I was small until I figured out that was Not Right Actually lol
Funny enough, I DID get to go to Exchange City as a kid. While the lead up to the trip wasn't as extensive as you described (Or at least, I don't remember it being weeks, or voting on mayor), it was pretty much exactly as you've mentioned here. I chose to be a radio host, which ended up being a fairly unsupervised role...so I spent the day wandering around between songs! The most memorable part was how heavily advertised the health insurance was. They told us, "If you don't get it, you could be bankrupted!". As our grade depended on the money we had remaining, practically everyone had purchased it. I, however, saw through the facade and chose not to have any insurance. I'm pretty sure I was one of three people that didn't have it, as I was called in for an 'emergency' just as they had warned. I knew I had lost it all, and slowly made my way to the hospital to face my death sentence. The young lady operating the front desk took my name, and rang up my total. I handed my card to her, completely resigned to my fate. She swiped the card. Then she made a face. She swiped it again, and in confusion, handed me my card. Supposedly, one of the random events that happened throughout the day was a 'system failure', which required 'maintenance' (kids) to fix. As it was the end of the day, they weren't able to fix the problem before we packed up and I was the happy beneficiary of insurance fraud. I learned nothing.
Wild! Did you learn to write checks? That was something I VIVIDLY remember from the weeks leading up to visiting. And did you have to interview for your job? I don't think I even got the job I applied to/interviewed for, but I do recall that being the moment I developed a deep and abiding anxiety in regard to job interviews, haha
I also was a radio host during my trip. I had wanted something cooler but turns out I basically was getting paid to do nothing so a win is a win. Funnily enough, I had something similar happen. Managed to dodge a “grass” walking ticket because I hadnt purposefully walked on the grass but jumped one of the corners and fell, (barely) bonking my head a little on the way down. I milked it, bawled my eyes out. Got away scott free. ✨Crime✨ Lesson learned: never let your fear of embarrassment prevent you from avoiding consequences
You totally learned something! That the world is full of risks and sometimes taking a risk pays off but other times it doesn’t. Kinda reminds me of Junior year high school, the computer screwed up and didn’t schedule me for PE for a whole semester. I kept quiet since I hated PE. Near graduation time a year later the counselor noticed the missing grade and asked me about it. I just shrugged and said “everyone has to take PE”. Not a lie but not exactly accurate! Got away with it too.
We didnt have kid cities here. But the childish chaos in this video reminded me to a incident in my youth. Our school had this really big playground in the sand and one day we decided to build a bunker in it. Which turned out great and soon other kids joined in the fun. As the bunker grew we needed to be more organized. So a nation was born. A nationfounded around liberty and shovels. Where children could become diggers, planners, guards and decorator. At the end of the break we hid the shovels and if you did a good job last break, we rewarded you a shovel to dig as you desired. At the cost of those slacking off. Unfortunatly, shovels, the oil of our economy became a limited resource and quickly conflict arose between the varous groups digging their own bunkers. Forcing nations to invade other nations. Taking their shovels and annexing their sand bunkers into their own. Some nations were wiped out with their citizens either forced to assimilate. Or be send to those concentration camps we just learned about in history. Where they were forced to spend their entire break in a pitch dark hole dug underneat some wood planks. At this point, the local superpower, the teachers decided to intervene and deployed a weapon of mass destruction, a bulldozer to level everything while we were forced to appologize to another classroom for what essentially boiled down to war crimes. And thus came an end of my carreer as a corrupt warprofeteering politican at the age of 9.
The way that kids either just embraced the power fantasy or succumbed to the crippling despair of their respective roles makes this whole thing one incredibly intriguing social experiment if anything
my wannado city experience was mostly confusion and being uncertain about what i wanted to do for work. now as an adult, my experience has mostly been confusion and being uncertain about what i want to do for work. INCREDIBLE accuracy!
For me, someone convinced me that the soda bottling job would reward you with a free bottle of soda at the end. This did not happen, and I was sad. I still have my uncashed check from all those years ago
Hardcore wannado city kid here, visted 3 times. This brought me to tears. I called my father and we talked for 10 minutes about this pure nostalgiafest. Edit: I was always a Firefighter since my dad was one in the early 90's
Judge: "Is the defense's fraud for real or just joking" Lawyer: "Your honor, you wasn't there. My client is a first grader, of course he'd have bad handwriting" Opposition: "Your honor, I'd like for a change in the defense because there's a conflict of interest" Judge: "why tho" Opposition: "The defendant's lawyer is literally his brother" Judge, turning to the jury: "Chat, what do we think?"
i have been to kidzania a few times, nothing beats the experience of signing up to be a crime investigator, and standing at the entrance of the crime scene crying because it's dark
Ten year old detective, putting a choco stick in their mouth: "Two years on the force, it never gets easier. You got a light?" (Their six-year old partner lights an invisible lighter under the choco stick)
@@kassyyar97I think I did that but I was last and couldn't climb up into it bc I was too short and then by the time I did they all went off and left me😭😭
oh my god. I was a biztown mayor. I was a little goody two shoes so I don’t remember any game breaking exploits but it was insanely special for me, a very bullied kid, to be mayor of my whole class of around 75. Good stuff. I learned a lot of good skills from the program like how to write a check that I still use today as an adult. This just full took me back and I’m very excited to see the train wrecks some of these resulted in
This video exists because Kevin still hasn’t gotten over never getting to be mayor. It was an hour and thirteen minutes of therapy. We’re here for you, buddy.
we called it exchange city and i was a judge in the government. the cops and i quickly realized the only way we could feasibly pay off our loan was to catch and fine as many people with minor infractions as possible. the kid cops didn’t want to do that so we never paid off our loan. we did leverage our positions to get free snacks from other businesses though. life imitates art
"I am an objective narrator. I have no pre-existing bias on this subject." Seriously a great cutaway joke and worth the pause to process. Damn that's hilarious.
The unintentional comedy that comes up in a "giant roleplaying complex for kids to act out real world occupations" is so painfully hilarious no writer could ever come up with any of it.
I remember going to the KC Exchange City as a kid. I missed the day that everyone got drawn for their jobs so I was going to have to be a worker and decided to instead start a crime racket with four of my friends. We offered "protection and sales services" to the grocery store and "aggressive advertisement" to other businesses for a small fee. Essentially because it was the only place with drinks we started to water down the product selling half the amount for double the price. We would go to the middle of the city and yell about the deals instead of them using the radio station. We would've won had the Mayor not gotten salty and threatened to throw us in jail and take away our money, so we had to pay them off. So just like in real life our glorious politician came out richer than they were before, exploiting the honest working men and women.
@@Crzysquirrel124thst HAHAHAHA! We did something similar - but it was basically a coup... Of the 4 5th grade teachers, OURS was impressed, the other 3 were NOT.
It’s ok Kevin. If you were one of the kids that was good at math in my grade, you were forced to be a business owner or accountant, even if you just wanted to be something else. Kind of ruined the whole experience for me to have to write checks the whole time.
"Nestle sponsored an elaborate Wonka factory where children could learn to be Oompa Loompas... this was a perfect fit for the kid's city, as Nestle have a long history of relying on children to make their chocolate" 🔥🔥🔥
As a kid growing up in kansas city, I remember my time in exchange city. I was sick the week before going so I missed the entire "choose your career path" so I was assigned.... AT&T desk salesman... It was rough. My co-workers were not the brightest bunch. Everyone had to buy a landline phone for business in the first minute and then never returned. We all sat for a few hours gluing fabric to hand copied phone books as it was our only product possible. By the second hour we realized we would never break even on our company loans. We continued to slave away. By the end of the day we had abandoned our store to spend the measly salary we received. Fortunately, one of my co workers had taken the entire company savings (which was ment to pay back our entire loan) and had taken it to the stock market. There he invested it in the sports store that was overflowing with customers all day. By the end of the night we had the most money in the city because the most irresponsible student stole the phone company's money and invested it in the equivalent of Nvidia without telling anyone. From that point on I no longer cared about walking on the grass and would pay for all fines from the police that continually followed me around. It was fun having F U money.
A _lot_ of the jobs there were really rough with a few that were notably more fun, desirable, and better paying. Same with the shops. Since most of the products were assigned in advance, some were fundamentally more popular with little chance to actually compete or feel any sense of influencing your success. I got stuck being the accountant for the post office. Something so miserable and realistically dull as to mirror reality. Much of it also got to be assigned by your teacher with little regard for what you liked or wanted. Hence why as a kid who hated math I got a job that was all about doing math all day. They also relied heavily on forcing all of the businesses to buy something from the one otherwise boring shop that provided it whether they wanted it or not (e.g. requiring you to have a sign made by the sign shop), thus teaching children about regulatory capture and government-enforced monopolies. You may have gone later than I did. I don't recall phones or a stock market in the late '80s when I was there.
@@Belgand I went in 2013. Yeah I remember the sign shop. Now that I think about it we were a requirement to start a business but other than that people had no point in visiting us. Also every business had tons of accountants because it was one of the most time consuming job writing cheque's to the employees every hour.
@@nastyeggplant Truly, although because nothing of true worth was actually sold in exchange city, it did a good job of teaching you money doesn't buy happiness (or that much lol).
I really love the extra personal touch this video has to it, the personal interest from the documentarist, and the humour spiced between it. I mean no offense in saying this, but it's something I hardly saw in previous videos, and that's probably why it kicks that bit harder seeing little personal anecdotes pop in throughout this
YOU HAD TO FILE INSURANCE CLAIMS IN KID CITY like imagine getting angry with the kid on the other side of the phone because you've been transferred around for twenty minutes between classrooms
"This job [defense attorney] is so easy! All you have to do is ask 'can you prove it?'" Was the standout line for me. I paused it for a second just to marvel at how he solved the game of modern law in half an hour.
It's crazy coming across this video. When I was a kid, my family took a trip to Mexico City to visit La Ciudad De Los Niños because my dad's colleague was an investor who wanted to try bringing the concept to California. It didn't end up happening, but that trip is a core childhood memory.
You know the videos gonna be good when in the first 10 minutes it goes "yeah they opened the attraction and it was a great success", and then you notice there's an *hour left in the video*
such an amazingly done video that finally sheds light on wannado city! i LOVED wannado city as a kid. as a y2k south florida kid, my family and i had season passes and went all the time, literally almost every weekend. i have so many child hood pictures of me doing almost every single job and activity. i was heart broken (i think i actually cried) when i found out they suddenly closed and i always wondered what happened to them. even as a teenager i couldn't find much information on their closure online, and it remained mainly a mystery to me. i think about wannado city every so often and i have so many fond memories there, i even miss it as an adult. in a way, it heals my inner child a bit to finally hear about their full history and true reasons for closing. thank you for highlighting what may seem like a one off business failure to most, but a really big part of a few adult's childhoods!♡
As someone that went to exchange city as a kid, I am so sorry you had to miss out, that shit was sick. I got fired from my job and then was arrested and put in jail for begging people for money to pay off my loans
That IS sick. But who were they to snuff out your flourishing? They should have let u keep going! Maybe you could have gotten into running a protection racket, securities fraud ... I mean, don't the detectives need something to do?
My teachers had to assign a student to every role, even the ones nobody wanted. Teachers didn't like me, so I didn't get any of the top three jobs I requested. Instead, I got stuck with one of the jobs nobody wanted to do. I had to stand in one spot and write down slips of paper for the radio station or a related field. One of my tasks was to write down radio 'shout outs' that kids could purchase, but nobody wanted to waste their money on that, so nobody bought any. Plus, the other kids didn't like me, which didn't make it any easier. In hindsight, it was a pretty good preparation for the real world.
I love how quick it goes from "Yeah I loved the bank as a kid" to "75% of the funding was gathered via 30+ corporate sponsorships including Walmart" lmfao
I was wondering how they could possibly make pretend-job-land big enough to draw crowds, then he mentioned corporate sponsors and before he could even begin naming them I just went, "oh I see, capitalism for kids."
My husband went to the JA Biztown in our city as a kid and recently detailed his experience as a “Construction Company CEO” to me! Some highlights include: • An adult volunteer posing as an ‘electricity provider’ plugged in the TV in his office and billed his company in return. Upon finding the TV turned off halfway through the experience and (correctly) assuming that he would need to pay again to continue having it on, he walked over and plugged it in himself as he had watched the volunteer do it earlier. He didn’t get caught. • He got hungry towards the end of the experience (after eating his sack lunch) and opted to use company funds instead of his paycheck to buy some snacks for himself at the grocery store. • At the end of the experience, his company’s profit came out to a *whopping $2.*
i did biztown when i was younger too but have no coherent memories of the day, just that i was working in the library/bookstore and someone put the free books we were to take home on the shelves and we were able to take what we wanted. i got a "meet julie" american girl book
I also did JA Biztown and applied and interviewed as a teller but was hired as a CFO which was really cool at the time and honestly still think the experience as a whole was pretty cool. Then again, doing that kind of thing when theres no bad consequences to endure is always fun.
Dang, when I did biztown in elementary school, all I did was build a chair. Dunno what those people were thinking giving ten year olds cordless drills.
59:14 "Nestle, who also sponsored La Ciudad de Los Niños, was a perfect fit for the kids' city. Because they have a long history of relying on children to make their chocolate." That was a deadly sneak attack. 10/10.
I remember going to JA Biztown for my 5th grade field trip. I applied to be a "pilot" for my local airport since I heard it made the most money. What's funny is the flight simulation was just airplane seats in a chamber like Star Tours with no motion but a knob I controlled to vibrate the seats and it even played Soarin' over California's soundtrack throughout the ride. Overall, I enjoyed it as it felt like I was operating a Disneyland attraction.
40:30 “Bianca’s party guests became sickened by the sight and had to leave the tiny OR. Bianca simply shook her head in annoyed disappointment, quietly concluding ‘She’ll never become a doctor’, before continuing on with the surgery.” That little girl stood on BUSINESS.
Bianca told it like it was, but I don’t blame her friends for ditching. I was there at Wannado City… it was seriously graphic. They were using like, college-level dummies + internal organ footage in the veterinary office. I, too, realized very early on at Wannado City that I would never EVER be a doctor.
My mom is an opthalmologist (eye doctor) and when I was a kid I browsed her medical ILLUSTRATED books about eye diseases. It had every kind of gross imagery you can possibly imagine, including injuries (right in the eyeball). It was very fun to me to discover that most of my classmates in school considered this stuff gross, when I showed them photos of those illustrations on my shitty Nokia phone. I feel Bianca would also not be afraid of such picture books
I love how even as kids, the cops are power-drunk, the lawyers are cocky jerks, the criminals are crazy and creative, and the grocery store shelf stockers are miserable It's still a great idea overall though, i wish i could've gone to one of these as a kid
The section questioning whether or not kids were having fun role playing scenarios like financial hardship or losing an aunt was hilarious to me as someone who's favorite game as a child was to pretend that i was an abandoned single mother struggling to care for like 8 babies
I played "army" all the time. Then I was a teenager during 9/11 and just the right age to enlist in the real army a year before we invaded Iraq. I wish I had included the downsides of war in my games of "army"
personal favorite of me and my friends around age 9 was "one of us is dying of a terminal illness that may or may not be magical in nature and the rest of us have to find a way to save them before they die"
As a former employee of Wannado city I want to say thanks. There is a lot in this video I literally had forgotten about. I worked in the CNN/Cartoon Network attraction and also helped with a redo of the movie studio. I still have the DVD's of a few of our recorded shows. I am very proud of the work I did there and as I recall NONE of the regular employees knew about the financial issues OR the lawsuits that existed. I had tech experience so I actually helped out early in the park construction building the studio. One of the kids who frequently came to visit and was often found in the circus now tours the world with Barnum and Bailey and many other former employee's now work for Disney and Universal.
@@Murdecoioh lots. Like Cartoon Network promising to keep us updated with new clips and not delivering to the point we ended up making our own. Or management demanding the tv studio do more CNN shows even though the kids preferred Cartoon Network. I cross trained on the Spirit plane which was basically Flight Simulator put in for the kids and the amount of kid pilots who wanted to crash into buildings was scary. I was actually fired for driving one of the vehicles after hours and hitting a pole but when I pointed out I was told to drive it by a manager even though I had no experience on it my firing became a 30 day suspension. Most of the scripts for the various attractions were abandoned and rewritten by employees who knew it better.
if you have *any* media/ephemera from the park, especially those dvds, would you be willing to make digital copies for a service like the internet archive? I'm sure wikimedia would be thrilled to have any photos or recordings you personally took (licensing may be an issue, otherwise)
@@bradleyweber3416I was one of those kids trying to crash all the time 😭😅😅😅 thank you so much for making wannado so fun! my family got an annual pass one year, that's how much we loved wannado.
@@DiamondKingStudios Some asshole kid def gonna want to crash that for shiggles….Christ imagine kiddie inflation. This whole hypothetical is like Kid Nation waiting to happening
Damn, the ending statement remarking how kids are in such a hurry to become adults, and adults having a wistfully yearning to become kids again hurts so much.
Maybe it’ll change when I’m in my 50s, but I’m actually happy being in my 20s and not a kid anymore. A lot more freedom and I finally have control over my own responsibilities. I still get some help from my parents financially since I’m in college, so I’m definitely not a ‘full’ adult yet I guess. But I do not miss being a kid at all lol!
@@virtualgambit577Yeah your 20s rule man. What sucks is seeing what comes after your 20s, starting in your late 20s. Increasing levels of needless complexity compounding life. And people start to look at you differently if you choose not to engage in certain behaviors or conversations. People who you thought were chill and down to earth in their 20s will become arrogant materialistic assholes who only care about keeping up with the Joneses, as they say. You’ll be shocked by how many cool people will start to only talk about what cars they drive, the towing capacity of the fancy truck they got (and don’t need since they aren’t a fucking farmer lol), complaining about the school district their kids go to, complaining about the vacation they just went on (they didn’t have any fun because half the time was spent on logistics and hiring a nanny and arguing with the rental property managers) etc etc People really start to get worn down by societal standards after their whimsical 20s start to wear off. And the crazy part is, if you yourself aren’t as visibly “trying” as much as them, even if you are successful, people will assume you “don’t have your shit together”. It’s a crazy phenomenon that I’ve seen mostly in people 35+. Someone could be very successful in their field, yet if they aren’t actively doing all of the stressful pointless materialistic things everyone else does…then that person is seen as lazy. Even if they aren’t. It’s hard to describe but I notice it all the time. I think that’s a big reason why older adults miss childhood. In their heads the only time a person is truly care-free and stress-free is childhood.
creating semi-realistic portrayals of cities and then having kids recreate the same biases from the societies they're a reflection of is pretty grim but *fascinating*. this was an incredible watch!
I agree, but now I'm bending my brain inside thinking how you could simulate adulthood without reinforcing any adult biases or societies. "Okay kids, so we're either dropping you in the wizarding world, or the televised death match. Remake society anew before the bus has to leave!"
@@lmjohnsono to be honest I dont necessarily think it's a bad thing. Kids look at the world with much more attentive eyes than adullts do. Letting them roleplay back to us how they see us feels like an effective way for us to have to face rhe biases. Idk sonething something brecht verfremdungseffekt or whatever
@@borednerd5767 You just know the kids will stumble into kidgenics after roleplaying for looking enough and 4chan will try and convince Twitter to lynch the children. So let's... not allow anything of that sort to happen.
It depends cause my experience is that I got stabbed in my kidney in a robbery, went to a doctor who stole my kidney and the hospital bills left me in thousands of dollars in debt. While in the kid city I worked in a supermarket, I was the manager.
As existentially depressing as that sounds, becoming a full-on worker at a toy city sounds like something I would've loved to go to when I was young enough to still go on field trips. I would've had a blast, even if there was a higher-than-average chance I would've blown up after getting scammed to hell and back by my friends . . .
Never did I think that one of my favourite Documentarians would make a video about a place I've actually been to, usually it's about stuff I never got to experience because I wasn't able to, but a video about Kidzania is so cool I think this might be my favourite UA-cam video of the year
I went to Biz Town in fifth grade. I was given a piece of paper a few days prior to the field trip and was told to write down the three jobs I wanted. I wrote down: police officer, construction worker, and helicopter pilot. I got none of those and ended up being a bank teller. Considering that my current job involves finance, I guess it was a sign.
As I recall when we did Exchange City, there was a very small number of highly popular jobs. Being the DJ was number one and I believe our teacher did a drawing for it. I don't think anyone really wanted to work in the factory, be a bookkeeper, or most of the other jobs. It's the nature of things that too many of them are just grinding drudgery so that a small number of the kids can get the interesting management roles where they actually have a chance to learn things or have any influence. If they let everyone who wanted to the chance to open a business and deal with the challenges of competition, market niches, and the like it would be both more educational and more fun.
Imagine clocking out of kid world and the ride home just depressed cause you lost it all at the kidsino
99% of gamblers quit before their next big win
That’s just the chuck-e-cheese experience. I spent 5 weeks allowance and all I got was this rubber ball and eraser
@@BlazingAbyss879😭😭😭
THE KIDSINO! I'M DEAD ☠️
Your comment sounds funny. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I was a defense attorney at exchange city. The judge quickly realized her salary was paid by fines and decided to find everyone guilty. My salary as defense counsel was also paid by fines so I just stopped trying.
I’m an attorney now.
Every single commenter with a story about being involved in the kid legal system leads me to believe that the people who designed that aspect of the parks had some, uh, *interesting* thoughts about what they wanted to impart on kids about criminal justice.
@@Zizhou hanlons razor. They probably weren’t trying to impart anything and were just being lazy and implementing things in the easiest way possible. That being said it reflects reality when you see police departments turning into traffic ticketing machines that not only find their own operations, but sometimes the entire operations of small towns as well.
So how accurate is that to real life?
@@Zizhou They reflected their culture's justice system accurately and the children understood it.
Lol, that's scary 😂
The mock 'bad luck' card for the terrorist attack is so f-ckking funny. "The American way of life has been threatened once more. Please rebudget." Goddamn.
Same.
😂😂😂😂😂
Every time we walk through airport security, we are reminded the terrorists won.
"The American way of life has been threatened once more. Please rebudget." - President Bush, circa early 2000's
@@the_real_Kurt_Yarish Except he literally said to go shopping.
The fact that the 2008 financial crisis indirectly resulted in queues at the kiddie job centre is hilarious to me
Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? We may truly never know.
@@AMD_Fan_98 yes to both
@@AMD_Fan_98 art clearly imitated life here… that was the point of this art
As someone who grew up visiting the original Kid City in Mexico this sure does take me back to the time were I went to court for "messing up some flowers" and I ended up bribing the judge with a nestle chocolate.
is this what living in mexico feels like
This is amazing. If you have more stories I’d love to read them actually!
the judge be like:
"hmmmm, i guess there were no flowers messed after all"
is your icon maki from danganronpa
Amazing 🤣🤣🤣
The kids immediately realizing that manager is the best role because they do so little in most places is so poetic
God. I'm an editor, a manager, and I'm exhausted. I'm run off my feet from work.
@@vercoda9997 the job exhausted doesn't pay well. ;)
@@vercoda9997 ey at least you run.. pretty sure most regular workers crawl on the floor - with around 1/10th of the money you bring home non the less.
Cry harder.
As a manager, I can confirm I'm pretty lazy myself and the people I manage do the heavy lifting, however not everyone can manage people good, I always put my people first and do everything in my reach to make their work less miserable every day
@@gorgeluis Managers also have to deal with "Let me talk to your manager" cretins...
I was the Mayor of Enterprise Village. I had to wear a suit & give a speech at the beginning of the day but after that it was just me & my municipal underlings hanging out, ambling around town & spending my undeservedly high salary on McDonalds fries. I learned 2 important lessons that day: the people at the top don't really have to work at all & misappropriating taxpayer money is easy & fun
if my man defunctland was the mayor he would've brought up the local GDP by 200%, he is an uncorruptible individual who cares not about the delicious lure of McDonald's fries only for $1 at any participating location, but for the wellbeing of his constituents
Commit embezzlement for fun and profit
This is how I felt scoring a manager job in the arts & crafts store. I had a great salary, but no time to spend it and all I was allowed to do was sit there and watch the other kids do the fun creative stuff.
I was either a bookkeeper or secretary for the mayor, I don't remember which. I do remember being bored and wishing I was given a different job.
I also was mayor for enterprise village in 5th grade. They wanted me to write and give my own speech at the end of the day, but I think they skipped it because it was getting late, which was lucky for me because I wrote three words on the computer they gave me. But for the entire day, they wanted me to give out shopping bags to everyone in the school that was in 5th grade to give me some this to do, because they didn’t have anything else to do. Once I visited about three people were giving their bags, my kids brain decided that “this is boring, imma chill in my office.” So I did nothing but sit in my office, and when I got paid I bought chicken nuggets and fries, and just sat in the little McDonald’s eating my food. When we left, they had a bunch of burgers and food left over in the front seat, and one of the teachers just gave them out to students. I ate about 2 before I stopped eating. Oh, and I wasn’t elected to be mayor, I kinda went to the teacher that was assigning roles to the government officials, and I said “hey, I’ll just be the mayor!” And the teacher was just like, “okay!” So while everyone worked, I just sat on my ass and ate chicken nuggets.
all I really remember about my biztown experience was that I REALLY REALLY DESPERATELY wanted to be mayor. I put so much thought into a campaign slogan, how I would market myself as what biztown needed, how I needed to put together a speech that balanced business with emotion; how I planned to *win the hearts* of my potential voter base. I labored over my speech for days, crying at the kitchen table because I would much rather be drawing my warrior cats ocs than writing an optional essay. but eventually, I was ready.
I gave my speech with as much emotion as I could muster, keeping all of my dad's public speaking lessons in mind. in a way, it felt like he was there with me, guiding my mouth to say the right things at the right moments to capture the audience. I walked back to my seat afterwards, feeling like I had conquered the biggest challenge I'd ever had to face in my fifth grade life. fantasies swirled in my head of how I would foster a legacy during my term as biztown's greatest mayor. I was SURE I would win.
I lost to a girl who promised everyone she'd do the chicken dance if they voted for her
I’m so sorry for you.
Well, was it a good chicken dance?
I feel you!! Although it's a little different for me. I ended up winning the mayoral election for BizTown, and I was so happy. I was going to be the mayor of at least 4 classes! But of COURSE something had to go wrong.
The entire year I hadn't gotten sick. I felt it the week before the trip to BizTown, and I even remember saying to my teacher: "I'm gonna get sick next week aren't I." Lo and behold, the week of BizTown, I come down with the flu and can't even attend the school days prior to the trip. I tried going in the day before, but all my friends said I looked pale as a ghost, and I sure felt it. Ended up spending what would've been an amazing day, on the couch playing clash of clans and throwing up.
All my friends returned and told me about how much fun they had. I still resent that week for having such a once-in-a-lifetime experience taken from me just because of some dumb flu 😭
Sounds like the average American voting system to me
Best comment
The fact that kids figured out how to commit robbery, bad checks, and kidnapping is hilarious.
Kids Kidnapping kids!?!?! Yo.THAT'S F.U.B.A.R.!
I used to break out of those rubber metal bars, it was fun 😂
Me too! I used to rob the spare bank and sometimes and once a kid cop came in to do an unrelated investigation and caught me! He tackled me and took me to jail lol
I’m not surprised kids do this in Roblox games all the time
They grow up so fast
Hearing about the kids performing bank robberies, writing bad checks, kidnapping babies from the hospital and putting kids in jail because it was “fun to break” was unironically one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long time.
That sounds on brand. Kindergartens go though thousands of dollars of toys as some kids think breaking them is fun
I want to watch a COPS or Wannado PD show
Teach kids how to be adults, kids discover the benefits of crime.
Yeah, seems like the inevitable result of the set up.
And unfortunately you can't exactly simulate jail time within the park, even with a time-out jail, because parents can just bail the lid out and go home, even a ban from the park(temporary or permanent) isn't the same...
My brother and I ended up in jail when we visited La Ciudad de los Niños. I can't quite remember what we did, I believe we had a car accident or something like that, but jail was fun 😂. They took a picture of us while in "jail" and we were smiling like a pair of fools, loving the experience, lol.
@@RipOffProductionsLLC going to jail at La Ciudad de los Niños wasn't necessarily a punishment type of situation, you could end up in "jail" by accidentally doing things that would put you in jail in real life, such as having a car accident. My brother and I were put in jail when we visited the park but we weren't misbehaving, nor were we banned from the venue.
i was not expecting these children to successfully recreate the stanford prison experiment
we need a new stanford prison experiment except this time with rubber bars and a publix.
fun fact! the stanford prison experiment was a scam! the student who was warden basically moulded the guards into being assholes. The doctor was taking the especially cruel "guards" aside and told them they were doing a good job, they were actively encouraging the guards to do the kind of stuff that the "results" of the experiment insisted happened organically.
Im pretty sure they just replicated IRL policing
@@PanSpaceman and also without the coaching by the researchers for the guards to be more cruel
If you've ever heard little kids play especially little girls it's not that shocking tbh. I'm just glad that my two youngest nieces aren't at the wife beaters and orgies stage of playing Barbie😂
I had the privilege of going to one of these make-believe towns my fifth grade year as well. I had the job of “security supervisor”, which had THE MOST BORING PAPERWORK AND HOMEWORK OUT OF ALL OF THE JOBS. But I arrived at the city that day, and I was led to a room with a bunch of screens showing footage throughout the entire city. I basically got to spy on my classmates the entire day. It was AMAZING.
It's okay, Kevin, you're the mayor of Defunctland. We'd all vote for you.
I'm convinced this video was just propaganda against the children who did get to be mayor
What did those kids do for us? Nothing.
But Kevin provided more than an hour of entertainment with this video alone.
Vote for Kevin. Make the right choice.
But what if him getting that position as a mayor inspired him to enter politics in real life instead of making UA-cam videos?
@RadenWA honestly he do better than most politicians out there today.
I'd vote Kevin for president.
I would vote for him
My daughter went to a Kidzania. She asked for the job of 'Mob Boss'. So she tried to convince kids to rob stores for her. Which worked.
reminds me of club penguin
@@loduca16people are always so quick to dismiss an event strictly because the individual personally believes it’s “too good to be true” - but is it so hard to believe the commenter in this situation?
@@requiemthethethe It's just ignorant zoomer kids. They think everything that happened before them was fake and a lie because social media and tiktok has trained them to think that way.
@@MrWolfSnack could just your typical plastic bag on the sidewalk troll in a desperate attempt to grab likes in a room they failed to read.
Either way youtube comments are youtube comments. No need to take serioisly. 😅
@@MrWolfSnackthey know the world is a crazy place, why do they doubt slightly crazy things happened to one of the millions of people on the internet
“I’m not putting anything in the bank. I want to feel it in my pocket” is the most badass thing I’ve ever heard and it was said by a child.
the Eugine Krabs mentality
@therranolleo468 I’m 25 and I’ve been re-watching clips from Spongebob lately. The clip where he hits his toe (claw?) on the rock and starts swearing is so relatable as an adult. I can’t wait to have kids just so I can show them Spongebob.
Poor person mentality😢
@@ohbogey your pockets are as small as your ambition
@@erick74777 🔥 🔥 🔥 🖊️ 🔥
I lived in Mexico City during a few years and my parents brought me once with a friend to the original Ciudad de los Niños. Our first stop, the hospital. The moment I stepped out I just started vomiting. That was the time I knew I wouldn’t be a doctor… Then we approached the plane! They had little simulators which was where you actually did something, but the actual cockpit (since it was a section of a real aircraft) was not used. However, since we were 4 years old, we didn’t know how on earth to fly in the simulator so they brought us to the cockpit (which had no screens or anything) and we just let our imagination drive us. I’m now an aeronautical engineering student!
I love stories like that.
I remember Exchange City. I had to take a job at a store that made toy reindeers that were essentially just a styrofoam ball on the end of a wooden dowel. There were like 6 of us working the shop and for some reason we had such high demand that we couldn't make these things fast enough. Then I got off work and immediatly got arrested because I accidentally stepped on a carpet square that we were supposed to pretend was a 'flower bed.' Then the cop also accidentally stepped on the flowers as he walked over to cuff me, so we agreed not to tell on each other and went our separate ways.
10/10 would blackmail the Exchange City Police again
The police corruption in Kid Cities is outrageous
Reminds me of Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times"
@@SrGanso-tv6mw I appreciate your Chaplin-themed thought process haha
Even the kid cities can't escape corruption
So sad
“The park is now overrun with miniature graffiti, tiny debris, and child-sized collapsing infrastructure”
Poetry. Stuff like that and your restraint in not referencing Kirk Milhouse’s race car bed with the guy who bought the airplane are why you’re one of the best writers on this platform.
Yo Geoff, what's up
MB wants to be Tim Rogers so bad it’s absurd
@@SploinkoCan you blame him though?
Lovely to see you here, maitre d from Chez Garbage!
Not the crossover I expected to see but where else would Geoff have learned the business acumen to launch and run Chez Garbage if not Exchange City. Maybe he even sold keychains with men in them?
"all you say is can you prove it" dude that kid is the best fucking lawyer every. That was young Saul Goodman
Seriously!! That made me laugh so hard. Especially because most adults are so condescending to children, but those little bastards are astute as hell as long as they get something out of it. That’s why incentivized discipline is the best way to raise a kid… I’ll bet.
If only Phoenix Wright learned how to lawyer from those kids. Maya would get accused of like half as many murders.
*Slippin Jimmy
saul goodboy
That would have been so much easier than the bribes i would give out.
"I can't afford to"
Gotta love when park creators go the extra mile and make the experience as realistic as possible. 10/10
42:50 this is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Imagine you’re an adult staff member and you’re helping the kids play nurse. Then another kid runs in and kidnaps the baby dolls 😭😭😭
Okay but the one before it with the "I found cocaine on them" took me out even more lmao
I’m now imagining a long and drawn-out hostage negotiation scenario being acted out entirely by kids and it’s cracking me up
tbh, THAT would make the inevitable low paying job entirely worth it to me. 🤣
@@LittleAlternativeGirl Honestly I am not surprised a South Florida kid would drop that line.
helping kids play nurse? i need to you take a seat over there
the kids' reviews are so adorable there's something so silly about a kid stressing out about radio advertising and bank loans 😭
The bank loan part was so dark to me like 🫠
@@lid2966 well y'know what they say, if you don't laugh you'll cry or something like that
I CAN'T AFFORD TO!
omg 666th like!!!
There's nothing funny about the suffering that being 50000 Pesitos in debt can bring you. Shame on you for mocking these poor kidizens
/s
I like the realization that this is just your average ROBLOX map with extra steps and an astronomical budget.
Holy shit he’s right ladies and gentleman.
Omg you're absolutely right 💀
BAHAHAHAHA 😂
You say Roblox, but I grew up seeing this sort of thing in LittleBigPlanet 2 haha
Yeah, and that's even worse for me because I don't even like Roblox.
I went to one of these as a kid during a school field trip. I was bored out of my mind while also being extremely stressed because no one really explained to me what I was supposed to be doing. I got assigned as a "manager" and was never told what such a job entailed, and then my teacher scolded me for not scheduling my own lunch break, which included my actual real life lunchtime, which I didnt even realize was intergrated into the role play crap until after all the other kids had eaten and I was left sitting alone and hungry and still wondering wtf was going on.
I even asked for help, asked a teacher to explain things to me, and what I got was a grownass adult belittling me for not understanding how to schedule breaks or write paychecks. You know, as a 7 year old.
In a pretend job.
That I had no previous knowledge of.
Horrible experience, truly.
im sorry :c
If they'd told me I'd missed my own lunch because I didn't realise I had the autonomy to take it; I would have burst into tears right there
this is exactly what I imagine would happen with me as a child who didn’t quite understand my own autonomy
So basically you had a very realistic experience of adult life
@@kacodash2275 unfortunately, yeah. Pretty traumatic for a 7 year old
Pretty traumatic for an adult too, come to think of it... Isn't life grand? 😂
As a lot of the other commenters have noted, the best part of the video was the quotes from the kids. "And for all you girls out there, We have keychains with pictures of MEN in them." The full capital MEN kills me 😅😅😅 😂😂😂
It had me wheezing 😭
Steven Malla knew what market he was selling to. Little dude's got rizz.
"When a Florida Today reporter asked Malla what he would be when he grew up, he responded - incorrectly - 'baseball player'."
That part made me cackle. The correct answer is that this kid is going to defraud his investors, go to jail after the humiliating public scandal, write a best selling book on the ordeal (which is then adapted into a film starring Matthew McConaghey), and become rich again doing keynote speaking gigs for Fortune 500 companies after the success of his Ted Talk.
It has the exact diction of a Tim and Eric sketch.
So many great lines from these children. “Business is pretty lousy… I’m worried about the bank loan.” “These men are handsome and they’re in our keychains.”
"Men."
“I found cocaine on him”
I particularly love the blunt kid on the news of like “So you don’t die” 😂
‘Or put a picture of your boyfriend in there. Whatever. They’re $1.50’
"we learned to look left and right so we uh don't die"
This video is so nostalgic for me. I used to love getting arrested and then squeezing through the soft rubber prison bars to escape and get arrested again.
Did you ever get charged on timeout row for repeat offenses, and be sent to the Fisher Price My First Electric Chair?
@@BinglesP I think they switched to the Nerf Firing Squad or use of toy syringe "lethal "prune juice injections . . .
I was too fat to fit through the bars ˙◠˙ … one time the adult there felt bad for me cause all my friends escaped without me and she just let me out
@@repairednale sounds like you had contacts on the inside
@@repairednaleyou were in cahoots with the prison guards? Impressive
I was a savings officer at Chase bank at JA Biztown, and I left the place crying because I was so stressed out. Everyone had to cash in their checks through me to do anything with their money so I constantly had a line of kids I had to help the entire day. I never got to take a break or use any of my own money I made working. Made me never want to work at a bank when I grew up😅
Kevin's rage 28:21 at not getting to fulfill his destiny and become god emperor of Exchange City just explain so much about his career path.
Also at 36:30
@@derekw104 ......And again at the end. Definitely no bias here.
@@derekw104 Comes back again at 1:06:28
His sass in that clip 🤣🤣🤣 I laughed so hard when the chalkboard came up! 🤣🤣🤣
Tbh he should have gotten that role but fate is a bitch
god the idea of kids stressing out "ah fuck i owe randy 5 millions for loan how am i supposed to pay these" sitting at the park just hilarious
I went to finance park as a kid and still have distinct memories of sitting over a table stressing about trying to make a budget with my mediocre paycheck and all my bills
The way they essentially had to pay to work at some of the jobs hit a bit close to home with my first 2 jobs when I lived in a more rural area
hahaha
When I went to finance park I was a marriage counselor with a wife that made only 70% of the small wage, needless to say I wasn’t the richest.
Poor kids got a lesson in finance they never expected . . . I guess it's better they did with fake money than real money, I suppose.
“Despite the abject terror that is finding out your kid’s been Spirit-pilled without your consent” is the line that fully killed me
Ok… this video 3:34 so far seems pretty benign…. How… the fuck… do all these random quotes I keep seeing possibly fit into this story?!?!?!?😂
Timestamp 57:45
Today is the day this entered my vocabulary.
That little boy screaming "girls these key chains have men HANDSOME MEN" as a sales technique made me pause the video to finish laughing
Chinese Gatcha games do the same thing for men. It's an effective sales strategy.
@@nbewarwe also teenage girls as someone who had an ex-friend who was obsessed with that childe guy from genshit impact
39:35 "Malory, you have such a boring life on paper! Do something!" "I can't afford to!"
I FELT that.
Well the place was about life as an adult.
A little too real 😭
Absolute GOLD
shes just like me fr fr😭
facts
13:33I love that the moment the story leaves Mexico and Kevin Perjurer stops using the metric system he starts comparing things to football fields
OH GOD I COMPLETELY MISSED THAT 💀💀💀
-Those US size comparisons that aren't familiar/intuitive to some people outside the US
2000s Documentary: "Wow, the [large object] is as tall as THREE Statues of Liberty!"
Kid me, who has never even set foot in the western hemisphere: "Ok, how big is that"
Trivia book: "The Megalodon was as long as a schoolbus!"
(In my country schoolbuses aren't those big yellow vehicles; they're commonly just vans)
@@vitoc8454absolutely same. Our school buses could fit like 10 kids, so even if only have of us went to swimming, at least two had to ride with the teacher lol
But, given how much estimates of the megalodon‘s actual size differ, school buses with their varying lengths around the globe might not even be the worst comparison lol
@@vitoc8454 I've never even seen a school bus in my country 😂 never had a point of reference for sure
I don’t know why this whole concept is so funny to me. Like just some kid sitting around and being like “ah damn Billy over at the bank is really fucking me with these fees” and they’re both like 6 😂
Yeah I wonder if it’s how ridiculous it is. And maybe some aspect of our real world problems.
when you put it that way....
Yes, many of the kids testimonials were hilarious!
My favorite was the kid who was like, “This job [as a lawyer is easy]! All you do is ask them if they can prove it!” lol
I find the idea of a kid being denied a loan by another kid hilarious
@@danielmallory4687 I mean we just do that now as adults who are technically still children mentally, it seems like these days
I did JA BizTown in Clinton, Tennessee in 5th grade, and I took one main thing away. Before going to BizTown, every student in our grade had to take a test (I think it related primarily to economics). It turns out the higher score, the better the job. So when we took our field trip there, the smarter kids got nice jobs being executives at places like the bank (I was VP), while the kids who struggled more were given jobs at places like the gas station. It just felt like enforcing a barrier between kids considered smart and not smart. That still does not sit right with me
SAME!!! LITTARLY THE BEST DAY EVER! (but mine yas in Missouri)
That's scary as hell
I remember going with my brother to kidzania. We thought all activities costed money like Domino's pizza, and we ran out of money, not knowing where to get more money, we hung out in the Cheeto's sewers and were basically homeless
lmfao i’m crying imagining a homeless gang of children in the cheeto’s sewers of kidzania.
Real
Real Futurama vibes to vagrancy being a brand-sponsored activity.
@@benkrepshaw2742did you start a gang of street urchins?
I remember when I went (around 2013-14?) my cousin managed to get a driver's license there and we ended up passing a really realistic looking car crash and there were even kids doing a news report on it.
"Wannado city even opened up at night for adult-only events ... so they could get drunk and pretend to be giants"
I died. I am dead. I would do that.
Where did he say that
He said it about KidZania not Wannado
@@iamnotabot815821:25
@@cheseecakepay21:24 you’re wrong
I used to work at my local children's museum. They do those too. Those nights were thee WORST!
I volunteered at Finance Park through work.
Best interaction with a kid was when I was teaching him about home insurance, and he asked "When people say they're going to burn the house down for the insurance money, is this what they're talking about?"
Made my day, that did.
Man I miss working with kids. No one with a fully developed brain is ever as funny as a kid. One time one of the kids at a summer camp I worked at was sitting next to a male councilor and started stroking his (admittedly thick) arm hair and asked “do you like your fur?” And I couldn’t breathe for about three minutes
At least you taught them something they won't forget!
@@Oli.V That is absolutely hilarious. Something about the lack of social awareness morphing with razor-sharp observational skills. Creating the funniest off-the-cuff comments! Thanks for sharing
It's the best! I taught pre-k and overheard two kids playing house. Kid 1 asks Kid 2 if he wants anything from the kitchen. Kid 2 asks "Do you got any smokes?" (!!) Kid 1 has no idea what that means and responses "No, there's no fires here, just ice cream." XD
I had never even heard of "kid cities" until I watched this video. I found myself thinking, how could I have completely missed out on what was apparently a formative experience for so many kids and both a lucrative business?
And then I realized that the rise and fall of them happened entirely after I was already a working adult. I feel so old now.
The rise and fall of them happened before I was born lmao
"Each job lasted between 15 and 45 minutes", that's my dream 😭
Oh my gosh😂😂😂 that's a big mood!!!
Just become a Mojang developer
@@Antigen__15 minutes per month 😂
Even if it was 15-45 minutes then switch to a different job through the day, I’d be thrilled.
My ADHD brain struggles with focusing on the same task for too long.
It’s even harder in loud, chaotic environments.
@@Annie_Annie__ No one is really stopping you from asking like 5 different employers to work for an hour a day. You just would have to be really good and also be able to convince all those employers that you'd be amazing at that job in the short time you're there everyday.
the quotes from the kids are so funny 😭😭
“she’ll never become a doctor” and that one hsn kid were great
The keychain one KILLED ME
@@LunaSerenayt Future QVC on air talent material right there.
@@DuvalSt1We, uh, may need emergency surgery in the studio.
"Nestle, who sponsored La Cuidad De Los Ninos, was a perfect fit for the kid city, because they have a long history of relying on children to make their chocolate."
I was not expecting that level of savagery to just be casually thrown in there.
Meanwhile I was waiting for a roast along those linrs from the moment nestle was mentioned as a sponsor near the beginning lmao
That shot was so hard that Jim Ross should have called it.
Yet no quip could be more savage than Nestle's business practices, genuinely one of the most evil companies out there
…that S-word is a slur; I wouldn’t use it
@@aidanmallon9879 ...not in this context?
As someone who visited Wannado City frequently, this video brings back SO many memories that I had long forgotten about. I still have photos from inside Wannado City with me and my neighbors at the time. I remember so vividly having so much fun! To this day, I still talk to my close friends about Wannado City, and many of them have fond memories as well. Thank you for bringing my childhood back so I can relive the memories.
The main thing this impresses on me is that if you give a child adult responsibilities, they will very quickly adopt adult solutions to meet those responsibilities. For better or for worse.
The children yearn for the mines
@@DellDuckfan313 They yearn indeed
@@DellDuckfan313 deadass when I was a kid I wanted to be a miner at first because I thought it'd be like minecraft.
@@DellDuckfan313 As long as there is no boringness and not too much effort, even us adults would go for the mines
@@epicgamernik76 I'm not even 30 yet but I hate how old this comment makes me feel.
Exchange City was the most memorable part of elementary school. I worked as an account for a customer-facing store. My office was the size of a broom closet and had a crappy desk, a calculator, and a massive log of expenses I had to balance.
I was given so much work that I didn't get to experience anything, spend any money, and missed half of my lunch. The deli ran out of food and closed down before I could get to it.
I spent the rest of the day crying and thinking I was going to starve to death. They didn't even come to tell me it was time to leave - I only figured it out when all the lights turned off, and by then everybody was already in the parking lot.
It was very immersive and really prepared me for adulthood.
Sorry to hear about that traumatic experience.
This tracks with my Exchange City experience.
God I remember Exchange City like a repressed memory. I think I remember my year that someone’s older brother had found out the “hack” of how to make the most (printing a ton of fake money slips and the stuff that said you did a job) and then told my classmate, so by the time it was our grade’s turn we were flooding the market with way too much cash that the older brother had basically handed to our grade. So bad that we basically created mass inflation and sandwiches were our new currency.
So the economic lesson we learned was “nepotism is alive and well” and “When you overprint money, a 10-piece McNugget is the best payment”.
Exchange City was a breakthrough moment for me. They made me an accountant, but didn't tell me how to do the work, so I just walked off the job
we lived in a kid society 🤡
The brands immediately saying the quiet part out loud when discussing why they want to sponsor these cities was hilarious
It is depressingly good that they feel no desire to hide their motives and actions.
I went there in the year 2000, it was awesome and since it was a school day it was mostly empty. One thing to note is that, back then, when you "entered" you actually had to sit in the plane and play a 3D flight simulator where you flew the plane and landed it in the city, afterwards you came down and actually entered the city.
Quotes of children innocently realizing stark and harsh realities about being an adult but not really understanding what they’ve stumbled upon yet is some of my favorite content out there.
This is the best episode of this show ever.
The most adorable dystopia I've ever seen
Its a good episode but my favorite episode from kevin is absolutely the history of the fastpass. It's easily my favorite video essay on the whole site.
I agree about the fastpass episode. It's so well written, playing out so well narratively. That essay was a better story than many recent movies I've seen
"She'll never become a doctor."
@@Sirliam95 I just gave a recommendation to my brother. The way I describe it is that the Fastpass video is just _"The Fastpass video"_ and it stands alone on its own, it's Defunctland doing a proper serious documentary deserving of industry awards. Same with the Disney Channel Theme video.
This one competes with the Coney Island video for the best "fun Defunctland" video, still educational but the meat of it is in all of the amazing quotes coming out of it.
I would kill for a full-length documentary on the kid city crime sprees. Also, wild how kid cop corruption so closely mirrors real cops. There's some interesting psychology there.
Pretty excellent demonstration of how when you financially incentivise incarceration, miscarriage of justice is an inevitability.
Lil' Jimmy hijacks a kids 2003 Fisher Price and then gets into a nerf gun shootout with a bunch of junior detectives.
It's like the Stanford Prison Experiment, but with little kids
I feel they saw cops doing that and thought that was normal. I mean, I definitely thought that way when I was small until I figured out that was Not Right Actually lol
All that seperates these kids and real cops is about 8 years.
Funny enough, I DID get to go to Exchange City as a kid. While the lead up to the trip wasn't as extensive as you described (Or at least, I don't remember it being weeks, or voting on mayor), it was pretty much exactly as you've mentioned here. I chose to be a radio host, which ended up being a fairly unsupervised role...so I spent the day wandering around between songs!
The most memorable part was how heavily advertised the health insurance was. They told us, "If you don't get it, you could be bankrupted!". As our grade depended on the money we had remaining, practically everyone had purchased it. I, however, saw through the facade and chose not to have any insurance. I'm pretty sure I was one of three people that didn't have it, as I was called in for an 'emergency' just as they had warned. I knew I had lost it all, and slowly made my way to the hospital to face my death sentence. The young lady operating the front desk took my name, and rang up my total. I handed my card to her, completely resigned to my fate. She swiped the card. Then she made a face. She swiped it again, and in confusion, handed me my card. Supposedly, one of the random events that happened throughout the day was a 'system failure', which required 'maintenance' (kids) to fix. As it was the end of the day, they weren't able to fix the problem before we packed up and I was the happy beneficiary of insurance fraud. I learned nothing.
King shit. Don't let these insurance industry cronies bring you down.
Wild! Did you learn to write checks? That was something I VIVIDLY remember from the weeks leading up to visiting. And did you have to interview for your job? I don't think I even got the job I applied to/interviewed for, but I do recall that being the moment I developed a deep and abiding anxiety in regard to job interviews, haha
I also was a radio host during my trip. I had wanted something cooler but turns out I basically was getting paid to do nothing so a win is a win. Funnily enough, I had something similar happen. Managed to dodge a “grass” walking ticket because I hadnt purposefully walked on the grass but jumped one of the corners and fell, (barely) bonking my head a little on the way down. I milked it, bawled my eyes out. Got away scott free. ✨Crime✨
Lesson learned: never let your fear of embarrassment prevent you from avoiding consequences
You totally learned something! That the world is full of risks and sometimes taking a risk pays off but other times it doesn’t.
Kinda reminds me of Junior year high school, the computer screwed up and didn’t schedule me for PE for a whole semester. I kept quiet since I hated PE. Near graduation time a year later the counselor noticed the missing grade and asked me about it. I just shrugged and said “everyone has to take PE”. Not a lie but not exactly accurate! Got away with it too.
We didnt have kid cities here. But the childish chaos in this video reminded me to a incident in my youth.
Our school had this really big playground in the sand and one day we decided to build a bunker in it. Which turned out great and soon other kids joined in the fun. As the bunker grew we needed to be more organized. So a nation was born.
A nationfounded around liberty and shovels. Where children could become diggers, planners, guards and decorator. At the end of the break we hid the shovels and if you did a good job last break, we rewarded you a shovel to dig as you desired. At the cost of those slacking off.
Unfortunatly, shovels, the oil of our economy became a limited resource and quickly conflict arose between the varous groups digging their own bunkers. Forcing nations to invade other nations. Taking their shovels and annexing their sand bunkers into their own. Some nations were wiped out with their citizens either forced to assimilate. Or be send to those concentration camps we just learned about in history. Where they were forced to spend their entire break in a pitch dark hole dug underneat some wood planks.
At this point, the local superpower, the teachers decided to intervene and deployed a weapon of mass destruction, a bulldozer to level everything while we were forced to appologize to another classroom for what essentially boiled down to war crimes.
And thus came an end of my carreer as a corrupt warprofeteering politican at the age of 9.
The salesman kid from part 4 was born for this holy shit. These keychains have pictures of MEN in them. Handsome MEN.
And they're in our keychains. Men.
RIP shigechi, you would’ve loved enterprise village😔
Or your bf or whatever.
Love that bit at the end where they ask what the kid would be when he grows up, and the narrator days that he incorrectly said baseball player.
The kid could sell the time to a clock.
The way that kids either just embraced the power fantasy or succumbed to the crippling despair of their respective roles makes this whole thing one incredibly intriguing social experiment if anything
Ever heard of the Stanford prison experiment? If not, go search it. Nutshell:what you just said, but so extremely violent IT WAS FORCIBLY ENDED EARLY!
my wannado city experience was mostly confusion and being uncertain about what i wanted to do for work. now as an adult, my experience has mostly been confusion and being uncertain about what i want to do for work. INCREDIBLE accuracy!
I really hope more people see this comment because it is 💯
For me, someone convinced me that the soda bottling job would reward you with a free bottle of soda at the end. This did not happen, and I was sad. I still have my uncashed check from all those years ago
Hardcore wannado city kid here, visted 3 times. This brought me to tears. I called my father and we talked for 10 minutes about this pure nostalgiafest. Edit: I was always a Firefighter since my dad was one in the early 90's
poetic to me that making a model recreation of adult life for children very quickly revealed exactly what was wrong with modern adult life at the time
That was exactly my thoughts. I wonder if there was any academic research on this entire venture; seems like it would’ve been a goldmine for academia
Unfortunately its aged quite well…
"Being a lawyer is so easy. All you have to say is "Your honor you weren't even there""
Judge: "Is the defense's fraud for real or just joking"
Lawyer: "Your honor, you wasn't there. My client is a first grader, of course he'd have bad handwriting"
Opposition: "Your honor, I'd like for a change in the defense because there's a conflict of interest"
Judge: "why tho"
Opposition: "The defendant's lawyer is literally his brother"
Judge, turning to the jury: "Chat, what do we think?"
"Objection your honor, that's cap"
"Objection denied"
First question... killer says what?
"Your honor, my client would like to enter a plea of 'Nuh-uh!'"
i have been to kidzania a few times, nothing beats the experience of signing up to be a crime investigator, and standing at the entrance of the crime scene crying because it's dark
Oh god I was the same
Ten year old detective, putting a choco stick in their mouth: "Two years on the force, it never gets easier. You got a light?"
(Their six-year old partner lights an invisible lighter under the choco stick)
I used to cry at the Max Steel adventure one at Kidzania because of that same reason, it was too dark in the sewers 😭💀
hahaha this is hilariously cute
@@kassyyar97I think I did that but I was last and couldn't climb up into it bc I was too short and then by the time I did they all went off and left me😭😭
oh my god. I was a biztown mayor. I was a little goody two shoes so I don’t remember any game breaking exploits but it was insanely special for me, a very bullied kid, to be mayor of my whole class of around 75. Good stuff. I learned a lot of good skills from the program like how to write a check that I still use today as an adult. This just full took me back and I’m very excited to see the train wrecks some of these resulted in
This video exists because Kevin still hasn’t gotten over never getting to be mayor. It was an hour and thirteen minutes of therapy. We’re here for you, buddy.
"Icetown costs ice clown his town crown."
he deserves a thumbs up for that moment alone
“Spurned by his school from becoming Mayor of a Kid City” is the best Villain Origin Story to ever exist
Much respect to you for being verified without any videos uploaded ✊🏽
Look. We're getting more content from Kevin. He can vent a little, as a treat.
we called it exchange city and i was a judge in the government. the cops and i quickly realized the only way we could feasibly pay off our loan was to catch and fine as many people with minor infractions as possible. the kid cops didn’t want to do that so we never paid off our loan. we did leverage our positions to get free snacks from other businesses though. life imitates art
Except you decided that extorting people was a bad thing, and real cops do that all the time
Those kids had more spine than most police officers across the world.
Lmaooo oh I miss Exchange City
BRO in my exchange city I was walking too fast and got put in jail on 3 separate occasions. 😂
Bro…
19:45 I thought “maternity ward nurse” was the weirdest choice for an appealing job for kids until I got to “nightclub manager”
Bail bondsman still the weirdest one imho
No, it was great, they made you take care of the babies!!
@@sophiaruizuvalle2523 And you apparently had to fend off roving gangs of baby thieves
@@ngwoowas kidnapper one of the jobs?
@@cr103 probably seen it by now but 42:50
This is my favourite channel, its weirdly nostalgic for a childhood i didn’t even remotely have.
This is literally the “you can take the children from the mines, but you can’t take the mines from the children”. Unironically this seems bloody epic.
I absolutely would've loved this as a kid
Yeah I was lucky enough to go as a kid, really fun
"I am an objective narrator. I have no pre-existing bias on this subject." Seriously a great cutaway joke and worth the pause to process. Damn that's hilarious.
I also burst out laughing at that jab to Nestle and the irony of child labor. Damn.
I had cracked up so hard. Definitely funny
That animated chalkboard is the stuff that completes the scene
Yep. Agreed. Pause and thumbs up.
The unintentional comedy that comes up in a "giant roleplaying complex for kids to act out real world occupations" is so painfully hilarious no writer could ever come up with any of it.
I'm gonna start searching for any documentation of stories that happened there because it's so funny
Unintentional Stanford Prison Experiment lol
it's so good -- taking a child's ability for insane make-pretend and try to constrain it to adult logic? the hilarity writes itself
@@MosstradesTHERE ARE. MEN. IN THE KEYCHAINS
@@edu7979 - A wizard selling items haunted by the souls of their previous owners.
Night club manager is crazy for a kids roleplay
Kevin just getting repeatedly salty over not being able to run for mayor is what really elevated this from great to magnificent for me
He's got my vote!!
I remember going to the KC Exchange City as a kid. I missed the day that everyone got drawn for their jobs so I was going to have to be a worker and decided to instead start a crime racket with four of my friends.
We offered "protection and sales services" to the grocery store and "aggressive advertisement" to other businesses for a small fee. Essentially because it was the only place with drinks we started to water down the product selling half the amount for double the price. We would go to the middle of the city and yell about the deals instead of them using the radio station.
We would've won had the Mayor not gotten salty and threatened to throw us in jail and take away our money, so we had to pay them off. So just like in real life our glorious politician came out richer than they were before, exploiting the honest working men and women.
@@Crzysquirrel124thst HAHAHAHA! We did something similar - but it was basically a coup... Of the 4 5th grade teachers, OURS was impressed, the other 3 were NOT.
It’s ok Kevin. If you were one of the kids that was good at math in my grade, you were forced to be a business owner or accountant, even if you just wanted to be something else. Kind of ruined the whole experience for me to have to write checks the whole time.
We need a supplemental video or podcast where he can tell the story and be as salty as he wants.
"Nestle sponsored an elaborate Wonka factory where children could learn to be Oompa Loompas... this was a perfect fit for the kid's city, as Nestle have a long history of relying on children to make their chocolate" 🔥🔥🔥
I made a rude noise at that line, then had to pause and cackle
💀
I just ate toilet paper in a vid 💪❤🎉🔥🔥🆘
@@KheldarLarsI paused at the Oompa Loompa part, like “Oh good, slave labor…” and thankfully Kevin knew so too.
That took my breath away ha ha...
As a kid growing up in kansas city, I remember my time in exchange city. I was sick the week before going so I missed the entire "choose your career path" so I was assigned.... AT&T desk salesman... It was rough. My co-workers were not the brightest bunch. Everyone had to buy a landline phone for business in the first minute and then never returned. We all sat for a few hours gluing fabric to hand copied phone books as it was our only product possible. By the second hour we realized we would never break even on our company loans. We continued to slave away. By the end of the day we had abandoned our store to spend the measly salary we received. Fortunately, one of my co workers had taken the entire company savings (which was ment to pay back our entire loan) and had taken it to the stock market. There he invested it in the sports store that was overflowing with customers all day. By the end of the night we had the most money in the city because the most irresponsible student stole the phone company's money and invested it in the equivalent of Nvidia without telling anyone. From that point on I no longer cared about walking on the grass and would pay for all fines from the police that continually followed me around. It was fun having F U money.
This is incredible thank you for sharing
A _lot_ of the jobs there were really rough with a few that were notably more fun, desirable, and better paying. Same with the shops. Since most of the products were assigned in advance, some were fundamentally more popular with little chance to actually compete or feel any sense of influencing your success.
I got stuck being the accountant for the post office. Something so miserable and realistically dull as to mirror reality. Much of it also got to be assigned by your teacher with little regard for what you liked or wanted. Hence why as a kid who hated math I got a job that was all about doing math all day.
They also relied heavily on forcing all of the businesses to buy something from the one otherwise boring shop that provided it whether they wanted it or not (e.g. requiring you to have a sign made by the sign shop), thus teaching children about regulatory capture and government-enforced monopolies.
You may have gone later than I did. I don't recall phones or a stock market in the late '80s when I was there.
The kid who punted the company money to the stock market is such a baller that the pain of slaving away melted when that check hit 🤣🤣
@@Belgand I went in 2013. Yeah I remember the sign shop. Now that I think about it we were a requirement to start a business but other than that people had no point in visiting us. Also every business had tons of accountants because it was one of the most time consuming job writing cheque's to the employees every hour.
@@nastyeggplant Truly, although because nothing of true worth was actually sold in exchange city, it did a good job of teaching you money doesn't buy happiness (or that much lol).
I really love the extra personal touch this video has to it, the personal interest from the documentarist, and the humour spiced between it.
I mean no offense in saying this, but it's something I hardly saw in previous videos, and that's probably why it kicks that bit harder seeing little personal anecdotes pop in throughout this
YOU HAD TO FILE INSURANCE CLAIMS IN KID CITY like imagine getting angry with the kid on the other side of the phone because you've been transferred around for twenty minutes between classrooms
You would have been the best mayor Exchange City had ever seen.
So true Tampa Bay Buccaneers!
The Bucs are based.
Is the irony of this comment lost on you cause have you watched or not
Oh is this the real Bucs?!? Insane!
Why is the real bucs here lol
The quotes from the kids are absolute gold. The kid who is emphasizing that there are handsome men in the keychains made me cry laughing
"This job [defense attorney] is so easy! All you have to do is ask 'can you prove it?'"
Was the standout line for me. I paused it for a second just to marvel at how he solved the game of modern law in half an hour.
I feel that one girl so much
"How much have you made?"
"450"
"And how much have you spent"
[3 second pause] "...550"
Yeah I want an hour of nothing but interviews of the kids
I could listen to an hour of this a day
"There are men and they are in the keychains. Or you could put your boyfriend in there or something"
It's crazy coming across this video. When I was a kid, my family took a trip to Mexico City to visit La Ciudad De Los Niños because my dad's colleague was an investor who wanted to try bringing the concept to California. It didn't end up happening, but that trip is a core childhood memory.
You know the videos gonna be good when in the first 10 minutes it goes "yeah they opened the attraction and it was a great success", and then you notice there's an *hour left in the video*
"Mallory! You have such a boring life on paper! Do something!" "I can't afford to" damn I felt that.
(39:33) huge mood
@@darkness74185very huge mood
Every adult watching felt that
Delight in the last days
And then Mallory became a pretend drug addict.
"This job is so easy, all you say is 'Can you prove it?'." - Saul Goodboy
Not our Jimmy!
Slipping Jimmy:Origina
@@bluekewnethat IS our Jimmy !
Don't forget his wife, Kid Wexler!
defense attorneys definitely do be like that
such an amazingly done video that finally sheds light on wannado city! i LOVED wannado city as a kid. as a y2k south florida kid, my family and i had season passes and went all the time, literally almost every weekend. i have so many child hood pictures of me doing almost every single job and activity. i was heart broken (i think i actually cried) when i found out they suddenly closed and i always wondered what happened to them. even as a teenager i couldn't find much information on their closure online, and it remained mainly a mystery to me. i think about wannado city every so often and i have so many fond memories there, i even miss it as an adult. in a way, it heals my inner child a bit to finally hear about their full history and true reasons for closing.
thank you for highlighting what may seem like a one off business failure to most, but a really big part of a few adult's childhoods!♡
As someone that went to exchange city as a kid, I am so sorry you had to miss out, that shit was sick. I got fired from my job and then was arrested and put in jail for begging people for money to pay off my loans
That IS sick. But who were they to snuff out your flourishing? They should have let u keep going! Maybe you could have gotten into running a protection racket, securities fraud ... I mean, don't the detectives need something to do?
Accurate simulation of American life.
Can you please explain what happened if you ended the day in debt?
Raising a bunch of Ferengi. 😂
Honestly, though, I admit that this was a good idea overall.
My teachers had to assign a student to every role, even the ones nobody wanted. Teachers didn't like me, so I didn't get any of the top three jobs I requested. Instead, I got stuck with one of the jobs nobody wanted to do. I had to stand in one spot and write down slips of paper for the radio station or a related field. One of my tasks was to write down radio 'shout outs' that kids could purchase, but nobody wanted to waste their money on that, so nobody bought any. Plus, the other kids didn't like me, which didn't make it any easier. In hindsight, it was a pretty good preparation for the real world.
Kevin's consistently envious resentment toward every kid who vaguely mentioned being a mayor really adds a whole layer of character to this video
"A Florida Today reporter asked Malla what he would be when he grew up, he responded (incorrectly) baseball player."
LMAO
He may be a hustler, but his priorities are straight.
He's a player, all right.
Just the fact that Kevin went for such a sick dunk on a 10-year-old is hysterical lmao
I’m so glad I wasn’t taking a drink of my water during that line because I absolutely would have spat it all over my phone, truly savage
37:38 Not including timestamps for an hour long video smh
I can't get over the fact that 2 kids went to one of these kid cities and decided "You know what? Let's rob the bank."
I love how quick it goes from "Yeah I loved the bank as a kid" to "75% of the funding was gathered via 30+ corporate sponsorships including Walmart" lmfao
I was wondering how they could possibly make pretend-job-land big enough to draw crowds, then he mentioned corporate sponsors and before he could even begin naming them I just went, "oh I see, capitalism for kids."
My husband went to the JA Biztown in our city as a kid and recently detailed his experience as a “Construction Company CEO” to me! Some highlights include:
• An adult volunteer posing as an ‘electricity provider’ plugged in the TV in his office and billed his company in return. Upon finding the TV turned off halfway through the experience and (correctly) assuming that he would need to pay again to continue having it on, he walked over and plugged it in himself as he had watched the volunteer do it earlier. He didn’t get caught.
• He got hungry towards the end of the experience (after eating his sack lunch) and opted to use company funds instead of his paycheck to buy some snacks for himself at the grocery store.
• At the end of the experience, his company’s profit came out to a *whopping $2.*
i did biztown when i was younger too but have no coherent memories of the day, just that i was working in the library/bookstore and someone put the free books we were to take home on the shelves and we were able to take what we wanted. i got a "meet julie" american girl book
I also did JA Biztown and applied and interviewed as a teller but was hired as a CFO which was really cool at the time and honestly still think the experience as a whole was pretty cool. Then again, doing that kind of thing when theres no bad consequences to endure is always fun.
Little embezzlers!
Dang, when I did biztown in elementary school, all I did was build a chair. Dunno what those people were thinking giving ten year olds cordless drills.
Truly the ceo experience of putting company funds to your own expenses
59:14
"Nestle, who also sponsored La Ciudad de Los Niños, was a perfect fit for the kids' city. Because they have a long history of relying on children to make their chocolate."
That was a deadly sneak attack. 10/10.
Someone can explain the joke ?
@@ManOfCulture1992 Little African kids harvesting beans with machetes. At least those aren't getting poisoned by tobacco leaves.
@@ManOfCulture1992 Nestle relies on child/forced labor to harvest cocoa beans.
@ManOfCulture1992 Most chocolate harvesting involves the use of child labor and in some cases child slaves
@@CTimmerman Oh thanks
I remember going to JA Biztown for my 5th grade field trip. I applied to be a "pilot" for my local airport since I heard it made the most money. What's funny is the flight simulation was just airplane seats in a chamber like Star Tours with no motion but a knob I controlled to vibrate the seats and it even played Soarin' over California's soundtrack throughout the ride. Overall, I enjoyed it as it felt like I was operating a Disneyland attraction.
40:30 “Bianca’s party guests became sickened by the sight and had to leave the tiny OR. Bianca simply shook her head in annoyed disappointment, quietly concluding ‘She’ll never become a doctor’, before continuing on with the surgery.”
That little girl stood on BUSINESS.
Bianca told it like it was, but I don’t blame her friends for ditching. I was there at Wannado City… it was seriously graphic. They were using like, college-level dummies + internal organ footage in the veterinary office. I, too, realized very early on at Wannado City that I would never EVER be a doctor.
My mom is an opthalmologist (eye doctor) and when I was a kid I browsed her medical ILLUSTRATED books about eye diseases. It had every kind of gross imagery you can possibly imagine, including injuries (right in the eyeball).
It was very fun to me to discover that most of my classmates in school considered this stuff gross, when I showed them photos of those illustrations on my shitty Nokia phone.
I feel Bianca would also not be afraid of such picture books
I love how even as kids, the cops are power-drunk, the lawyers are cocky jerks, the criminals are crazy and creative, and the grocery store shelf stockers are miserable
It's still a great idea overall though, i wish i could've gone to one of these as a kid
“My little one’s a doctor! Which is yours?” “I think my kid is planting narcotics on a suspect for a harsher conviction”
"My child has been imprisoned for fraud and abducting an infant"
"My kid learned how to print money. I think that's yours leading the sting operation on his den."
Mine plays a dog in a television cartoon......
"My kid is making a documentary about the place."
"My kid apparently lost his wife and is now masquerading as a noir cop..."
This was just so, so good, from start to finish; your summation at the end was spot-on. You are a blessing to UA-cam
The section questioning whether or not kids were having fun role playing scenarios like financial hardship or losing an aunt was hilarious to me as someone who's favorite game as a child was to pretend that i was an abandoned single mother struggling to care for like 8 babies
At 7, I would wrap my stuffed animals in a blanket and pretend we were running from Hitler 😂
@@misschris325 oh god LMAO
I played "army" all the time. Then I was a teenager during 9/11 and just the right age to enlist in the real army a year before we invaded Iraq. I wish I had included the downsides of war in my games of "army"
i have no original experiences lol
me and my best friend would roleplay being the older sisters of orphan families with like 10 kids and no parents
personal favorite of me and my friends around age 9 was "one of us is dying of a terminal illness that may or may not be magical in nature and the rest of us have to find a way to save them before they die"
As a former employee of Wannado city I want to say thanks. There is a lot in this video I literally had forgotten about. I worked in the CNN/Cartoon Network attraction and also helped with a redo of the movie studio. I still have the DVD's of a few of our recorded shows. I am very proud of the work I did there and as I recall NONE of the regular employees knew about the financial issues OR the lawsuits that existed. I had tech experience so I actually helped out early in the park construction building the studio. One of the kids who frequently came to visit and was often found in the circus now tours the world with Barnum and Bailey and many other former employee's now work for Disney and Universal.
Oh wow, I guess it was a matter of time until a former employee found this video! Any other interesting anecdotes from your time there?
@@Murdecoioh lots. Like Cartoon Network promising to keep us updated with new clips and not delivering to the point we ended up making our own. Or management demanding the tv studio do more CNN shows even though the kids preferred Cartoon Network. I cross trained on the Spirit plane which was basically Flight Simulator put in for the kids and the amount of kid pilots who wanted to crash into buildings was scary. I was actually fired for driving one of the vehicles after hours and hitting a pole but when I pointed out I was told to drive it by a manager even though I had no experience on it my firing became a 30 day suspension. Most of the scripts for the various attractions were abandoned and rewritten by employees who knew it better.
if you have *any* media/ephemera from the park, especially those dvds, would you be willing to make digital copies for a service like the internet archive? I'm sure wikimedia would be thrilled to have any photos or recordings you personally took (licensing may be an issue, otherwise)
@@bradleyweber3416I was one of those kids trying to crash all the time 😭😅😅😅 thank you so much for making wannado so fun! my family got an annual pass one year, that's how much we loved wannado.
All the quotes from the kids just cracked me up. Especially the "we have pictures of MEN! These men are handsome and they are in our key chains. MEN!"
They should have added a section of the park where the kids could pretend to be boring businessmen who sue each other back and forth.
That would hit too close to home
La Ciudad and Wannado could have each used these as idea factories on how to sue the other one out of existence.
RIP should any kid decides to be a mini Gordon Gekko or Charles Offdensen
Imagine the section of the park with a stock exchange…
@@DiamondKingStudios Some asshole kid def gonna want to crash that for shiggles….Christ imagine kiddie inflation. This whole hypothetical is like Kid Nation waiting to happening
Damn, the ending statement remarking how kids are in such a hurry to become adults, and adults having a wistfully yearning to become kids again hurts so much.
Maybe it’ll change when I’m in my 50s, but I’m actually happy being in my 20s and not a kid anymore. A lot more freedom and I finally have control over my own responsibilities. I still get some help from my parents financially since I’m in college, so I’m definitely not a ‘full’ adult yet I guess. But I do not miss being a kid at all lol!
It's Painful because it is TRUE!!
We always want what we don't have, after all
@@virtualgambit577Yeah your 20s rule man. What sucks is seeing what comes after your 20s, starting in your late 20s. Increasing levels of needless complexity compounding life. And people start to look at you differently if you choose not to engage in certain behaviors or conversations. People who you thought were chill and down to earth in their 20s will become arrogant materialistic assholes who only care about keeping up with the Joneses, as they say. You’ll be shocked by how many cool people will start to only talk about what cars they drive, the towing capacity of the fancy truck they got (and don’t need since they aren’t a fucking farmer lol), complaining about the school district their kids go to, complaining about the vacation they just went on (they didn’t have any fun because half the time was spent on logistics and hiring a nanny and arguing with the rental property managers) etc etc
People really start to get worn down by societal standards after their whimsical 20s start to wear off. And the crazy part is, if you yourself aren’t as visibly “trying” as much as them, even if you are successful, people will assume you “don’t have your shit together”. It’s a crazy phenomenon that I’ve seen mostly in people 35+. Someone could be very successful in their field, yet if they aren’t actively doing all of the stressful pointless materialistic things everyone else does…then that person is seen as lazy. Even if they aren’t. It’s hard to describe but I notice it all the time.
I think that’s a big reason why older adults miss childhood. In their heads the only time a person is truly care-free and stress-free is childhood.
The grass is always greener. I prefer being an adult because I can drive and have my own* money lol
creating semi-realistic portrayals of cities and then having kids recreate the same biases from the societies they're a reflection of is pretty grim but *fascinating*. this was an incredible watch!
I agree, but now I'm bending my brain inside thinking how you could simulate adulthood without reinforcing any adult biases or societies. "Okay kids, so we're either dropping you in the wizarding world, or the televised death match. Remake society anew before the bus has to leave!"
@@lmjohnsono to be honest I dont necessarily think it's a bad thing. Kids look at the world with much more attentive eyes than adullts do. Letting them roleplay back to us how they see us feels like an effective way for us to have to face rhe biases. Idk sonething something brecht verfremdungseffekt or whatever
@@borednerd5767 You just know the kids will stumble into kidgenics after roleplaying for looking enough and 4chan will try and convince Twitter to lynch the children. So let's... not allow anything of that sort to happen.
It depends cause my experience is that I got stabbed in my kidney in a robbery, went to a doctor who stole my kidney and the hospital bills left me in thousands of dollars in debt. While in the kid city I worked in a supermarket, I was the manager.
As existentially depressing as that sounds, becoming a full-on worker at a toy city sounds like something I would've loved to go to when I was young enough to still go on field trips. I would've had a blast, even if there was a higher-than-average chance I would've blown up after getting scammed to hell and back by my friends . . .
Never did I think that one of my favourite Documentarians would make a video about a place I've actually been to, usually it's about stuff I never got to experience because I wasn't able to, but a video about Kidzania is so cool I think this might be my favourite UA-cam video of the year
I went to Biz Town in fifth grade. I was given a piece of paper a few days prior to the field trip and was told to write down the three jobs I wanted. I wrote down: police officer, construction worker, and helicopter pilot. I got none of those and ended up being a bank teller. Considering that my current job involves finance, I guess it was a sign.
REJECT👏YOUR👏DESTINY👏GET👏TO👏THE👏CHOPPAH👏
I just remember learning how to balance a check book 😅
ayyyy fellow unwilling bank teller! i begged to be an artist of some kind. aint that just the way
As I recall when we did Exchange City, there was a very small number of highly popular jobs. Being the DJ was number one and I believe our teacher did a drawing for it. I don't think anyone really wanted to work in the factory, be a bookkeeper, or most of the other jobs. It's the nature of things that too many of them are just grinding drudgery so that a small number of the kids can get the interesting management roles where they actually have a chance to learn things or have any influence. If they let everyone who wanted to the chance to open a business and deal with the challenges of competition, market niches, and the like it would be both more educational and more fun.
same I had to be a dentist 😭😭