Some families learn the hard way that effort doesn’t always equal appreciation.

After years of complaints from spoiled cousins, one family ditched the expensive gifts and bought mountains of cheap gifts from the Dollar Store — and the kids were elated.

What they didn’t expect was that the adults would be the ones holding onto the grudge.

Keep reading for the full story!

I gave my cousins the Christmas gift they always wanted

Last Christmas, my family (Mom, Dad, brother (13M), and me (15M)) had to find a Christmas gift for my dad’s stepbrother’s 5- and 7-year-old boys.

We have to do this every year, and it’s the worst.

These aren’t the most well-behaved kids.

These kids are the biggest brats you’ve ever seen.

They punch, kick, make messes, and do everything bad they possibly can every time we see them, and their parents say nothing.

Every Christmas, we get them a gift worth around $100 each (sometimes two gifts, but it always equals $100 each).

Every Christmas, they complain that they hate what we get them and that they don’t get enough toys.

It’s so annoying.

This year, they decided to take a very different approach.

So in early December, we were deciding what to get them this Christmas, and I had an idea. Go to the dollar store and just get them tons of junky toys.

Nothing that will last more than a day, but it would appear as if we got them tons of toys. My parents loved this idea because they hated the griping over $75 checks and nice $25 toys.

So they pulled up to the store and went gung ho.

So we went to the dollar store and got a bunch of toys, probably 50 for each kid. That’s only $50 each instead of $100, but oh well.

Christmas comes, and we go to their house. The kids’ eyes light up as they open toy after toy, and for once, they are happy.

The parents weren’t near as pleased.

Their parents, though—my uncle and aunt—were smiling on the outside, but giving us the stink eye because they could tell these were cheap toys.

Lately, I brought this up to laugh about at my family’s dinner table (no extended family, obviously).

Apparently they’ve held on to this grudge.

My parents said, “Oh, that wasn’t funny. Aunt X and Uncle X were pretty annoyed at us and still are.”

This made me feel like a jerk because it was my idea, and our uncle and aunt knew that from my mom saying, “(insert my name) picked these out.”

Sounds like these bratty kids (and parents) pretty much deserved it.

Redditors chime in with their thoughts.

This user agrees it was a valuable lesson that needed to be taught.

Kids aren’t exactly the best at taking care of toys — even nice, expensive ones.

For the kids, this was still a great Christmas.

Maybe the parents are the real villain of this story.

If the adults are still mad, then that’s a them problem.

The kids got a mountain of cheap toys and the parents got a much-needed reality check.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.