I bought a $20 uke for my nephew's 5th birthday...about 8 years ago(???). He loved it. He strummed the strings, beat the dog with it, dragged it through the backyard, etc. That's who they're meant for, and how they're meant to be treated. I bought it at Sam Ash, and the guitar department manager made it sound like a dream (he was a ukulele and mandolin fanatic). The kid stayed interested in music, and now plays French horn in the school band. Buying a kid a serious instrument means leaving it at home, getting scolded for not taking care of it, etc. In other words, they could very well hate it in no time at all.
I used to have a bike shop, and we didn't carry cheap adult bikes. We did carry very affordable, but well built kid's bikes. Prices began at around $79 for a tricycle, and $129 for a small bicycle. We did get plenty of Sears bikes brought to the shop to be repaired, but usually to be reassembled properly right after being bought. We had a repair menu behind the counter, and the price for reassembling a Sears or Huffy bike was $100. Basically, we were saying they weren't worth the effort. They were also dangerous to ride. This was back in the 1990's, and I've noticed that cheap bikes seem to be made a bit more sturdy, and have much better brakes than before. Lawsuits will have that effect, along with cheaper labor costs: China, Malaysia, and Vietnam, rather than Taiwan and Japan.
My son is our only child, and he was wild about violin at around age 6, so we spent a couple hundred dollars. He eventually had a rather expensive 4/4 violin (they're sized according to the child's size), and he played in the school orchestra until he graduated high school. Many of the other kids never had a decent violin, and cheapies sound awful. A good bow goes a long way as well. I never asked the parents why they bought cheap violins for a student that was still playing when they reached high school, so no idea there. I do know a couple of the kids had very expensive violins, and I should mention this was a string orchestra, and not the school band. I have four brothers and sisters, and even though my father made a great deal of money, my clarinet cost about as much as Sears suit. I was on the golf team in high school, and you don't even want to picture what my clubs looked like! If I had nine clubs, they were from eight different manufacturers.
I didn't even have golf shoes!!! Needless to say, my balls were generally scrounged from what was laying around the golf course, and in varying states of being worn out. This was the varsity golf team!!! We did go to expensive restaurants several times each week, however.
Damn it! I'm buying something from Chuck Moore!!! Does he have a phone out in the jungle?