The Must-Have (and Bank-Breaking) Gift Dominating 2025 Wish Lists—What Parents Are Shelling Out

Move over, hoverboards—2025’s hottest gift isn’t just flying off shelves, it’s vaporizing family budgets.

The Price of Pandering to Tiny Tyrants

Parents now face a Sophie’s Choice: mortgage payments or junior’s social clout. The numbers don’t lie—this isn’t childhood whimsy, it’s extortion with a side of influencer marketing.

Why Your Wallet Won’t Recover

Supply chain poetry meets aspirational parenting. Limited inventory? Check. Viral unboxing videos? Obviously. A 300% markup because ‘it’s educational’? Classic hedge fund logic—if you can’t quantify the ROI, slap on a premium.

The Aftermath: Sugar Rush Meets Credit Crunch

Come January, expect a surge in ‘financial wellness’ apps—and a suspicious dip in avocado toast consumption. Pro tip: that ‘investment’ in little Timmy’s social capital? About as liquid as a blockchain game’s tokenomics.

Key Takeaways

• Parents planning to buy video game gifts for their children this holiday season expect to spend an average of $737, according to a new survey.
• Video games ranked among the top three most popular gift categories for kids, following money and clothing.
• A different report found that people plan to spend an average of $1,007 on all of their gifts this holiday season.

This holiday season, parents planning to buy video game gifts for their children are expecting to spend big.

A new survey of more than 1,900 respondents from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)—a trade association for the video game industry—found that parents who intend to buy video game gifts for their kids plan to spend $736.83 on average.

Why This Matters To You

Parents’ holiday budgets are being tested as gaming becomes one of the biggest—and priciest—gift categories of the season. Understanding what drives these costs can help families strike a balance between giving kids the gifts they want and meeting their budget needs.

Video games are at the top of many kids' wish lists this year. The most popular gifts for kids are money and gift cards (69%), followed by clothing and accessories (63%), and video games (58%), according to the survey. For boys ages 5 to 17, video games were the most requested item.

Related Education

Given that 85% of teens in the U.S. report playing video games, according to a Pew study, it's no surprise that they are requesting and causing parents to splurge on video games.

"Video games are one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the world today, with more than 205 million Americans powering up games every week to have fun, relax and connect with friends and family,” Stan Pierre-Louis, president and CEO of the ESA, said in the press release.

But with a price tag of over $700, video game gifts could end up being a large portion of your overall holiday spending. In October, Gallup released its results on the average amount people plan to spend on gifts this season: $1,007. If video game gifts are included in that total, then they'd make up about 73% of the budget.

If your kids really want the video game gift and you're comfortable spending over $700, consider these other ways you can save on other gifts this holiday season:

• Use coupons or shop for big-ticket items on deal days like Black Friday or Cyber Monday
• Give the gift of quality time instead of a gift you spend money on
• Make a small personalized gift instead of buying something that everyone has