Pink Poogle Toy Forum

I found the following news article at Voice of America. Enjoy!

Toddler Demographics
By Ted Landphair
December 2, 2004

American kids are way too fat, and parents are getting a good scolding for feeding their kids junk food. But now critics are blaming something else as well. It's called immersive advertising. You see, the makers of fattening foods are slipping their brand names into cartoons and video games. In the animated stories, children's characters not only run around with superheroes and sorcerers and fairy princesses. They also eat sugary cereals, creamy soups, and sticky candy. Not make-believe products. Real ones, like Honey-Nut Cheerios and M&M candy bits. Kids see these products and buy them, or beg their parents to -- which is exactly why advertisers pay to immerse their product names in the cartoons.

The hottest immersive-advertising partners are Neopets. These are cute little virtual pets on the Internet, whom sixty million kids pretend to own as they play 140 different Neopet games. When Neopets like Aisha and Bori and Kougra get hungry, they gobble down McDonald's French fries. In turn, McDonald's put little plush Neopet toys in its very real kids' meals of hamburgers and soft drinks and French fries.

All this has health advocates screaming. While cuddly cartoon creatures are plumping up corporate profits, they say, they're hooking American kids on junk food and sending them down the seductive road to obesity.

LINK http://www.voanews.com/english/American ... -voa73.cfm

Well, they better ban Tvs, movies, the making of movies, the watching of movies, radio and computers. There is no other way to totally rid us of it. I'm a bit over weight. I'm naturally that way. Its muscle <_< >_>

They always have to find something to blame. Nowadays, I could probably buy a gun and cause some chaos, then blame it on video games and everyone would be "Oh, that is so sad, it wasn't the kid, let's blame the video
games!".

Note: I wouldn't do that.

On bowling for columbine, they had this 16 year old walk into the store and try to purchase all there bullets they had in stock.

The store let the SIXTEEN YEAR OLD buy ALL the Bullets.

A tad overstated, I'd say. It's not like most of the food on Neopets is branded.

Now if the youngsters start demanding to eat dung, wormy apples, white chocolate & asparagus souffles, et cetera, then I'd say we had a problem.

Exactly. O_o

Not as if most little kids are out there spending the thousands it costs for the McDonald NeoItems for their pets...99.99% Of the pets in question are lving off carrot and pea omelettes, prune juice, and Jello. *lol* Maybe an occasional Milkshake, beefy broccoli, or vegeterian cheeseburger from the dice-a-roo. -_-

Another misinformed article hoping to score sensationalist marks with overprotective parents. Woo-hoo.

Yes, because those same children who are young enough to believe McDonalds is "good food" are driving to McDonalds, walking in and purchasing the food with their own money. Their parents have no control over this.

NONE! It's an epidemic!

Hahahaha...EXACTLY! Parents have no control over what their little kids eat....better take away their computer so they won't have to be worried about happy-meal eating pets, plop them in front of the TV and let the 1000+++ McDonalds commercials do *that* job instead. I could understand if my pets said *this* when I fed them a "sponsor-food"....



.....but that isn't exactly what's happening here, is it?

LOL!!!

Yes, because of neopets I have now decided to become obese. </sarcasm>

This is just another case where media factors are being scapegoated to cover up the lacking parental involvement these days. The public is always looking for the easy excuse... they shoud be active, they're playing video games... they should eat healthy, but they're constantly eating fast food. People have nobody to blame but themselves, and until a child can make food and exercise choices autonomously blame their parents too.

Eh, so what else is new? Neopets has always been a force of eeeeeviiiiiiiilllll!

Oh ok I get it now, overweight children have nothing to do with the fact that their parents refuse to say no to their demands for more sweets, chocolate, chips, ice cream etc. Its all to blame on mcdonalds and neopets. Wow Im glad someone cleared that up for me. [/sarcasm]

Seriously though, it wouldnt matter how much advertising goes into websites, cartoons etc if parents and children were better educated on being healthy. My daughters school (she is 8 by the way) has been doing a healthy eating term where they have learned about healthy and unhealthy foods, they have only been allowed to eat healthy food at school and now she actively seeks out healthy food opting for fruit instead of sweets and preferring to walk instead of ride the bus.

You only have to go into a sweet shop to see children throwing tantrums because they want sweets or crisps and 9 times out of 10 the parents give in. Children have always wanted junk food because it tastes nice, this is nothing new the only thing that is new is that parents are finding it increasingly difficult to say no to their children, usually because they suffer the working parents guilt.

Like I really need the fact that I'm overweight rubbed in when I already do a good job of letting myself know. Real good self esteem thing going on here.

But honestly, they are sponsers with McDonald's and they sponser the occasional cereal or candy. Everybody does it! Apples don't need advertised because people don't go into factories and make them. Apple's grow off a tree. I mean, sure people sell apples, but factories don't produce them in mass quanities like chocolate bars.

I'm going to go have a bowl of lucky charms and eat a baby bottle pop now.

What else is new? People in America have extreme difficulty admitting they are the problem. They always like to blame other things besides themselves.

IMO, it's 100% the parents fault. Like mentioned before, it's not like the kids are driving to McDonald's to stuff their face with greasy fast food, it's the parents. I think the media is nothing to take seriously. It's just a bunch of people who like to write and criticize at the same time. Blasted freedom of the press...

No need to poke fingers at America like that. I get enough crap for being American already.

Im a bit overweight, but Very healthy.. the Doctor says the extra weight is muscle and alot of kids have it.. its Normal