Zillions of kids wish they had Brad Kriesman`s job. On Saturday mornings, Kriesman flops down in front of the tube, flicks through the cartoon line-up and ponders the question: Am I having fun yet?
”It`s not like work,” says Kriesman, 11, of Des Plaines. ”I only watch the shows I like, not the dumb shows.” Nonetheless, as a member of the elite ”Z-Team,” Kriesman`s pronouncements on the dumb and not dumb mean the difference between watch and not watch, buy and not buy to 260,000 readers of Zillions, a consumer-oriented magazine for the 8-to-14 set.
Since July 1990, Zillions has helped kids sort through the avalanche of sugar-coated come-ons and battery-powered fantasies that vie for their allowance dollars. That`s when Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, revamped its kids` magazine Penny Power to Zillions, the high-gloss bi-monthly.
In the driver`s seat
”Children in the marketplace used to be considered small change,” says Rana Arons, a Consumers Union spokeswoman. ”Now, they`re a billion-dollar market. The whole idea of Zillions, is to start kids thinking as consumers.” Like its adult counterpart, Zillions relies on two types of experts to rate burgers, jeans, sitcom, toys, microwave popcorn, hairspray, CDs and zillions of other products.
Grown-up analysts work out the fine points, like the nutritional comparison of oranges versus Twinkies (you guess).
The Z-Team reports on taste, local prices and kid appeal. ”They`re pretty disgusting, they have that American cheese taste to them-like they`re not real,” offers Z-Team member Jessica McCallen, 13, of Rockford, on the Twinkie question.
It`s not easy to land a job handing out that type of insight. Last April, 4,000 readers nationwide applied for 100 spots. ”We look for original ideas, and kids who can express themselves well in writing,” says managing editor Jean Kiefer, who reads every 75-word entry herself.
Jill Rosenberg, 9, of Oak Park, entered with this poem:
Shampoos: are they what they say they are?
After use you`ll look like a star.
Does this cure your sloppy frizz?
Which one is the dandruff wiz?
Which is the absolute best?
That is what I want to test.
It worked. Rosenberg, Kriesman and McCallen are the Chicago-area readers who made the cut. Matt Legg, 16, of Elk Grove Village, has been providing kid perspective since the Penny Power days. Now, he regularly reviews music. ”All of us reviewers are fossils,” says Legg.
Getting down to business
Then the work began. About every two months, Z-Team members receive a mystery package from Consumers Union in Yonkers, N.Y. Sometimes, it`s a product, along with instructions on how to put it through the paces and detailed evaluation forms. Other times, Z-Team members are sent out to check local prices of such products as microwave popcorn. Occasionally, they respond to questionnaires about kid life in general. Z-Team members keep the products they test, plus a T-shirt, but otherwise go unpaid.
Ode to shampoo aside, Rosenberg recently converted her family`s living room into a travel game test site. She put six games through a table test, car test and simulated airplane test, achieved by cramming herself, her brother, her Dad and the game into a small section of the sofa, and shaking the board every so often. ”Travel Trouble completely flunked the jiggle test,” she reports.
From best friends to bad ads
Kriesman recently filled out a questionnaire rating his best friend.
”I`d give Joel a rating of 10 billion,” he says. ”His best qualities are everything. He understands me, he`s funny, he can keep a secret. We get in trouble together because we talk so much.” Negative qualities? ”None.”
In addition to ratings, the magazine runs articles on budgeting, after-school job-hunting, environmentally friendly shopping, plus ”commercial break,” a cartoon that makes fun of bad ads. It hands out annual ”Zap Awards” to misleading ads. Like Consumer Reports, Zillions accepts no advertising.
Kriesman says he got the most mileage out of an article on allowance.
”It gave me more leeway to fight with my Dad when I wanted a raise.” He now pulls in $5 a week, the average rate on the 11- to 14-year-old pay scale, according to a Zillions survey.
But munching burgers, channel hopping and playing tapes isn`t as easy as it sounds. While Legg claims to spend ”about 10 minutes” writing his music reviews, McCallen worries about the time commitment. She`s also gained new insight into journalism. ”It always seemed sort of glamorous,” she says.
”Now that I`m part of it, it`s no big deal. Writers aren`t movie stars, they`re just people doing their jobs.”
As trained critics, Z-Team members have strong opinions about the magazine, too. All agreed its emphasis on fast-food and prime-time TV is out of touch. ”A lot of adults think all kids do is play Nintendo, watch TV and eat junky cereals,” says Kriesman. ”But now it`s the `90s and kids are more mature.”
The Chicago-area Z-Team says they`d like to see more stories on real-life problems, like drugs, gangs or pre-test stress.
”We worry about homework, about grades, about how to pay for college,”
says McCallen. ”I know I don`t worry about what TV show to watch. If I like it, I watch it.”
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For a Zillions subscripton, write to: Zillions, Subscription department, P.O. Box 51777, Boulder, Colo. 80321-1777. The first one-year subscription
(six bimonthly issues) is $16.
