A first encounter with a social robot can prompt wonder, comparison with familiar objects, and uncertainty about who would want it. How do prospective users construct product meaning when these comparisons do not converge on a settled category? We examine this question through an interpretive case study of older adults encountering social robots in France and Kazakhstan. Drawing on qualification, the intertwined work of classifying and evaluating, we identify three interrelated moments: enchantment, de-fetishization, and requalification. Informants express fascination or unease, question the extraordinary qualities attributed to the robot, and classify it while considering whom it might serve. They draw on cultural resources and their experience of aging throughout this work. Requalification can sustain incompatible classifications and place the robot with other users, with a future self, or within the informant’s own life. Our primary contribution is to research on product meaning in digital innovation. We explain how prospective users revise an artifact’s meaning through the joint assessment of what it is, what it is worth, and for whom. De-fetishization specifies how questioning extraordinary qualities participates in that work. Our secondary contribution is to qualification research: we show how classification and evaluation can yield a provisional position for an artifact while its category remains unsettled.