A Modest Proposal: Children's Characters Drawing Em In Early

A Modest Proposal

 The packaging of many junk food items in our country features the beloved faces of various popular licensed cartoon characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Scooby Doo. This advertising tactic is SO effective with children! It’s beautiful to see how easy children can be manipulated into loving things that their favorite television and movie characters say are great. I propose that we use this tactic to lure child consumers into other markets where they are underrepresented. Where are the child consumers for products like cigarettes? Alcohol? Online gambling? So what if these things have age limits. Let’s start getting kids interested early so they can start purchasing when the time is right. Plus, there is ample research to suggest that children will try out these before they’re supposed to anyways, right? I think it’s time to teach kids what to smoke, what to drink, and what games to bet their money on. I mean come on! I for one think that children have a right to know something like… what’s the best scotch to drink. And who better to tell them that than Shrek? I mean, come on! First of all Shrek is Scottish, so it’s perfect. Scotch sold by the most famous Scottish cartoon character in the United States? Little boys and girls would LOVE that stuff. And Dora the Explorer, she goes on a lot of long walks. Doesn’t Dora ever need a cigarette while she is going from “la casa” to “la biblioteca”? Dora would definitely light up a Fortuna cig on one of her adventures, it’s one of the most popular Spanish cigarette brands around so you could even probably weave it into an episode, or two, or five without anybody really noticing! YAY for product placement! Gotta love it. I truly believe that it’s time to accept the fact that anything dangerous CAN in fact be kid-friendly under the right circumstances! Just add a cartoon character that they know and trust, and you my friend are golden.