Almost daily, we're assaulted by new marketing campaigns created especially for my kids. Last month, for instance, we taped their favorite TV show, "The Backyardigans," off of Nickelodean instead of off of their commercial-free Noggin. Instead of talking about the new episode (they'd seen "Knights are Brave and Strong about 20 times), my son came upstairs and asked for a Kia Sedona.
"Why do you want one of those?" I asked him.
"It has lots of safety features," he said. "AND it has a DVD player." I know it's not quite fair to blame a car for loss of innocence, but suffice it to say, our family will never own a Kia Sedona. And we're going back to taping our second-run shows off of Noggin (which has this horror-show of a slogan: "It's Like Preschool On TV!" I'll save that rant for later.)
Assault No. 2 My mom and I took the kids shopping this weekend in search of a suit for my cousin's wedding. We checked Once Upon a Child first, but apparently, nobody dresses up in Blacksburg, Va. So we checked J.C. Penney We didn't find a suit. But the kids did discover T-shirts, bright red, with a dinosaur plastered across the chest. It wasn't the dinosaur that interested them, so much as the trains and remote-control trucks that were encased in plastic and hung over the hangers. Cost: $17 bucks. It's probably a losing battle, but suppose I'll try boycotting J.C. Penney for awhile, too. I'm not a huge fan of Raffi's music, but I do appreciate his involvement in the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (http://www.commercialexploitation.org/) It's time to get radical. Past time.
No comments:
Post a Comment