For Americans, QVC and Target regularly have the BLU Flex or TCL Flip 3 bundled with a year of Tracfone service for $50 or less.

Of course they do. But this is HN - not as neat as using the 15-year-old phone I have.

I mean, sure you can find them if you look hard enough, but a phone that plays videos is not a dumbphone in my book. And I wouldn't hand it to my kid. It's probably worse than handing them a smartphone, because I'm guessing it is just dumb enough to have no parental controls.

Is there such a thing? Given it's radio waves in regulated radio spectrum, I'm not sure such a device would even be allowed to operate without a license. This said, there are 3G Nokia dumbphones (e.g. C2-01). I just had to stop using one because my operator tore down the 3G network here, like in most of Europe. (2G was already down since some time).

Edit: there are even 4G-VoLTE dumbphones by the way.