Toys for Saps
Gary Cross, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University, and the author of “Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood” looks at Mattel’s recall of China-made toys in today’s New York Times and argues that it may be time to “rethink the decision to allow the unrestricted advertising and cartoon promotion of toy lines that has produced year-round marketing and piles of plastic toys, bought and soon discarded.”
“After all,” he says, “we ought to be just as concerned about the impact of character licensing and toy advertising on our children’s psyche as we are on protecting them from ingesting leaded paint and magnets.”
He gives an interesting overview of the evolution of the toy industry, showing how the number of toys based on licensed characters (easily promoted in film and in TV programs that are essentially extended ads) shot from 10% in 1980 to 60% in 1987. That’s an astonishing rise in a short space of time, and as a result we now have toddlers being fully immersed in consumerism. This is an unprecedented level of indoctrination — and one that goes largely ignored.
The commercial pressure of course mainly comes from TV, which makes me doubly glad that we only watch DVDs in our household.
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Published: Sep 16 2007
When I married and set up home, we chose not to have a TV, though we do watch the occasional DVD. Isn’t it amazing the pressure that box in the corner of the room exerts? When we visit family, there it is, always on! I do enjoy some of the sport – do you get to see Match of the Day over there?
but what I notice most is the constant barrage of mind-numbing ads.
I salute you on your decision! I find exactly the same as you, that when I visit family the TV is (almost) always on. And I get addicted.
I can hardly enjoy watching my favorite shows on US television because of all the ads, which seems to appear about every seven or eight minutes. I wonder what effect that has on people’s ability to concentrate?