Apparently, Color War isn’t just for kids anymore.
During a recent visiting day at her three children’s sleepaway camp in Maine, “Odd Mom Out” creator and star Jill Kargman watched as parents brought out the big guns in an all-out-battle for public affection, Upper East Side-style.
“Someone had a red wheelbarrow, pulling all the presents … There were people with Nobu sushi and I said to these moms, ‘How is that fresh?’ and they were like, ‘Oh, we were only wheels up an hour ago and we have ice packs,’” Kargman says of the private-jet-loving parents. “Someone brought a whole thing of [Chinese food from] Mr. Chow because their kids ‘missed ethnic.’”
“I know you’re happy to see your kids and it’s a big three weeks not seeing them, but it seems excessive,” says Kargman, 42, who lives in Manhattan.
Sleepaway camp is a rite of passage for many city tots. And with camps ranging from $8,000 to $13,000 for a full seven-week term, it’s an expensive one. But, for some parents, it’s not enough to send their kids away to lavish rural retreats. They hire professional packers to ensure their children’s trunks are perfectly assembled, send them off on private planes with platters of Zabar’s smoked salmon and even bring the household staff to visiting day to dust bust the cabin while the parents and kids reconnect after a grueling 3 ½ weeks apart.
“Visiting day is a whole beast in itself,” says Jodi Zgodny, co-founder of Love, Laura Gifts, which assembles extravagant baskets for the annual event. “Parents definitely want the gifts wrapped and ready to go.”
Zgodny says parents will shell out $70 for candy-covered lacrosse sticks and more than $100 for cellophane-wrapped, candy-filled packages outfitted in camp-colored ribbons. Then, there are the all-important bunk gifts — small, often custom, presents for the entire group — which can cost upward of $25 per kid (most bunks have around 10 kids).
Sometimes, the bunk gifts get even pricier.
“There might have been a rumor that somebody gave iPod shuffles to every girl in the bunk one year,” a director of an all-girls camp in New York coyly told The Post.
The camp banished the tradition five years ago after gifts became too excessive.
“It wasn’t in line with our values,” says the director, who asked to remain anonymous.
Leslie Venokur, founder of Big City Moms, a parenting Web site, sends her 8-year-old daughter, Sami, to Camp Pontiac in the Berkshires. Venokur says the girls’ beds are covered in gifts and food by the end of visiting day — no matter that all edible contraband is typically thrown out or donated after 24 hours.
“A lot of people go to their country clubs the day before and have them make their sushi platters and bring them up,” says Venokur, who lives on the Upper East Side.
“My daughter’s favorite food is steak. She loves it and I know she doesn’t have it at camp. My husband is crazy, and so he brought up a steak from Wolfgang’s on visiting day.”
For many parents, such as Upper West Sider Allysa Goldman, the excess is a way to show their love for their children.
“I was completely borderline certifiable,” says Goldman of her first year sending her now 19-year-old and 16-year-old sons to Camp Starlight in Pennsylvania (the youngest one is going for his final year this summer).
“We were notorious because we brought up so much stuff the first year and piled it up into the car and we realized we had no way of getting it all into camp,” says Goldman. “So we had to drive into town and buy those huge, huge garbage cans with wheels to put everything in it and drag everything up.”
But plain black bins didn’t cut it for Goldman.
“I went and bought stickers to decorate the garbage cans and put their names on them,” she says, with a laugh.
Some parents even take their domestic staff to visiting day.
“Every year, there are parents who bring their housekeepers to [clean],” says Goldman. “They’re there wiping the floors and spraying the Lysol.”
The third-season premiere of Kargman’s show, airing 10 p.m. July 12 on Bravo, centers around the absurdities of camp visiting day. She says nannies are more rare, but do make a cameo or two each summer. She recalls one set of parents who wouldn’t let their nanny dress down for the occasion.
“They made her wear the white Red Kap outfit,” she says. “I was like, ‘Give her a break, can’t she wear her dungarees? It’s f–king Maine. But she’s in uniform?’”
Goldman says some families will even pay to drive out all the “bunk junk” and food separately.
Flying private to visiting day is the new norm for the elite.
“The [hired help] will set everything up on the grass with a little tent and everything and leave,” says Goldman.
This sort of over-the-top behavior starts well before visiting day.
Parents shell out thousands of dollars for customized camp gear ranging from $100 splatter-painted sleeping bags to $175 Uggs with their children’s name spray-painted on.
And, then, there are the professional packers.
Zgodny’s company offers packing services at $100 an hour with a three-hour minimum.
“[My employees] bring Ziplocs and containers and Sharpies and label everything,” says Zgodny.
“They’ll put dryer sheets between each layer of clothes, so when they come to camp, it smells good. And they’ll put a nice gift on top, too,” she says of the new trend of a “trunk gift.”
Of course, parents save some extravagances for themselves, too.
Flying private to visiting day is the new norm for the elite who want to skirt a hellish 5-hour-plus drive to Maine and other out-of-the-way locales.
For those who don’t have their own jets, there’s Blade, which first launched private plane service to five camps last summer. This summer, they have expanded to 20 top camps in the Upper New York region, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Maine. One-way seats cost $425 to $525, according to Blade general manager Evan Licht, who says they’ve already sold out of certain flights.
Kargman says two parents offered her and her husband a ride home on their jet after last year’s visiting day.
“I was like, ‘Well, we have our car so that doesn’t work.’ And she says, ‘Send your people for it.’
“I’m like, ‘I don’t have people.’”