THU SEP 9 04

		Capitalist Kids. At Wannado City, a "retail entertainment concept" outside Fort Lauderdale, kids pay $25 each to find out what it's like to be a pilot for Spirit Airlines, a checkout clerk for Publix or a bottler for Coca-Cola, reports Allison Fass in Forbes (9/20/04). Their parents can come along too, but they pay $16. Interesting pricing. But even more interesting is the concept that kids between the ages of four and 11 hanker after opportunities to play at work, and that big brands will pay big bucks to sponsor the experience of working for them. "When you see that bank counter as a child, you dream of the day you can talk to the lady on the other side," explains Luis Javier Laresgoiti, who came up with this idea. Luis, the chief creative officer of Wannado City, www.wannadocity.com, pioneered a similar venue, La Ciudad de los Ninos (Kiddie City), in Mexico City. Kiddie City is much smaller than Wannado, but over five years' time, it managed to attract a total of "57 marketers, including General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft and Unilever, to pay a total of $3 million a year." Kiddie City generated some $12 million in revenues in 2003. Wannado, which is three times the size of Kiddie City, features 60 venues and offers "250 grown-up jobs." So, for example, kids get to use flight simulators to get a sense of what it's like to be in the cockpit of a DC-9. The Miami Herald, meanwhile, lets "them pose as reporters for the newspaper, " and Coca-Cola will soon host a bottling line, where kids will have a shot at fiddling with the carbonation controls. All the good children in Wannado City get paid the same regardless of their chosen profession (or profile). Paychecks can be cashed in for "wongas," Wannados' own currency, which can be spent at the resident beauty parlor or circus, for example. Or, "they can stash their wongas in an interest-bearing account at a bank (sponsored by State Farm). Wannado City is set up as a division of Corporacion Interamericana de Entretenimiento (CIE, for short), www.cie-mexico.com.mx, and the plan calls for revenues of $30 million, in ticket sales and sponsorships, by next August. The enterprise cost about $40 million to build, and so far it has attracted 11 sponsors, each paying $4 million (no one has claimed the pizza parlor or unfinished house, as yet). Projections call for one million visitors by next August, and plans are to expand to Chicago and New York, as well as "extend the franchise to TV, publishing and theater production." Tim Manners, editor