Oh, get the Giant tricycle. Those tricycles are fantastic. I swear the only reason my husband came around on the issue of kids was that he wanted an excuse to buy one of those tricycles ... and in fact he's worried that they will discontinue them before we are ready to buy one!
I pushed my niece around on a department store tricycle and it was pretty awful, all off-balance and hard to pedal. The Giants are so much better, and they are not super expensive at all. They are sturdy and are going to have resale value very much like the old red tricycles we had as kids did.
Buy the Giant!
Edited because I left out a crucial "not."
And again for an actual price comparison: this Target trike is $70. At our LBS, the Giant is $80. It's a no-brainer, if you ask me.