By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Lynne Kato, from left, shows her brother David, sister Valerie Schmidt, brother Kevin and mother Linda some of the $1,000 worth of toys she "bought" on a free shopping spree.
Lynne, 9, of Waipahu, and Dylan, 11, of Honolulu, each got to choose $1,000 worth of goodies at the store as finalists in Mattel Inc.'s UNO card game 25th anniversary sweepstakes. Twenty-five first-prize winners nationwide won $1,000 shopping trips.
Lynne said her mom, Linda Kato, sent in her entry.
"My grandfather, Haskin Little, who lives in Texas, entered me in it," said Dylan.
Both winners took little time to spend all that money. "It took like, less than an hour, about an hour," said Lynne. "I got stuff for my family, my brothers, my friends," as well as for herself.
"Barbies, Uno cards, like other Uno stuff," filled Lynne's shopping cart. She chose a Mr. Bucket game for her family, and a big stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh and a Holiday Barbie doll for herself.
The doll is Lynne's first Barbie, the start, she hopes, of a larger collection.
"It's real expensive and a lotta people were buying it," she said. The store limits sales of Holiday Barbie, one per customer, which convinced Lynne that it might be a good buy.
Lynne also bought a birthday present for a friend, Angela Raphael, and two bikes, one for her 7-year-old brother, Kevin, and one for herself.
As for Dylan, well, "I kinda knew what I was going to get," he said. "I really wanted some stuff and with the thousand dollars I could get it."
"I got some games for it (the Nintendo) and some controls and some memory packs...to save your games and save statistics."
He also "got some Barbie dolls for relatives and some Hot Wheels for friends and male relatives."
Dylan went through the store gathering sales tickets for the stuff he wanted and took them to the cashier. He estimates the stuff he chose came up to around $700. The rest, he let his parents spend for Christmas. "I told them they could use it for presents and charity and stuff."
Lynne also chose a Nintendo 64 game system, but she ran out of money before she could get games for it. In fact, said dad Anthony Kato, the total for all the stuff Lynne got went over the $1,000 limit. So dad ended up paying about $150 himself. He didn't mind. "We would have spent that on Christmas anyway," he said.