Yes. Children will play in a cardboard box, and together my sister and I can testify as living proof that children can play with anything you set before them.

I think middle-class parents are driven to keep-up-with-the-Joneses, and unfortunately the main drivers are the children themselves. Children are spoiled and exposed to all sorts of advertising in the guise of children's programming. Children's media is geared 100% to monetizing and productizing things and then having the children yelp at their parents in the grocery stores, in the toy stores, at home, at school, wherever, to please please please get me the new GI Joe or I won't be cool enough.

Yet like a cat, a child can take an emptied out cardboard box on Christmas and have it be the most wondrous source of joy for that entire year.

Encourage kids' creativity, encourage the magic of youth, encourage their innocence.