When Emily Kern asked her daughter, Charlie, how she’d like to celebrate her third birthday, Charlie’s answer was immediate and insistent. The kid wanted a Target — the store — party. Nothing else would do. Kern tried to deter Charlie — “No, that’s not a party, why not Trolls?” — but Charlie wasn’t having it. “I started asking, but she wanted no part [in anything other than a Target party],” Kern told Select All. So Charlie got her way. When her birthday rolled around — the party was in August, but Kern only posted about it on Facebook, to a viral response, this month — Kern and her husband, Jonathan, decorated the family’s house with red-and-white everything.
“She woke up from her nap right before the party started … and when she came downstairs, she yelled, ‘Target!’ She wanted to walk around the house looking at everything,” Kern said. “She told us it was her Target.” Charlie and her friends celebrated by eating food you could get at a Target food court — hot dogs and pizza — and went “shopping.” Charlie joins a short but growing list of kids who have requested — and gotten — oddly specific, business-themed birthdays. There was a 4-year-old in Arkansas who celebrated in 2015 with a CVS-themed party. And a 2-year-old in Louisiana celebrated with a personal-injury-lawyer theme — the birthday boy loved the attorneys’ “One call, that’s all ” television ads — that year, too. Kern said when planning Charlie’s party that she came across several other Target-themed birthdays on Pinterest. “I just think it’s so cool that they are thinking outside the box of the standard party themes,” Kern said, noting that she “wouldn’t be surprised” if Charlie wanted another Target party next year. “She doesn’t even have to get something when we go [to the store]. She just genuinely loves Target.”
