Honestly, for what I paid I'm willing to roll the dice. A protection plan would be at least $20, I think, and my end price was only $135 for the iPod. My kids are pretty good with electronics (they have an old iPhone they've been using for a while and they haven't killed it yet -

) and as long as the case is decent, I think it'll be okay.
I'm still trying to figure out what case - I think I'm going to go with the Otterbox Commuter case. Did you have one in mind?