Well Duh…
Actually the complaint by The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to the Federal Trade Commission is that ads and toys tied into the Transformers movie are aimed at kids under 13.
The Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood called on the commission to work with the toy industry and media companies to develop a uniform rating system so toys tied to PG-13 movies would not be marketed to children younger than 13. It also asked the FTC to investigate the marketing of PG-13 movies to children.
Don’t buy into the bullshit. If you are a good parent, you don’t need a group of a-holes telling you what your kid should or should not be playing with. Heck back in the 50s there were parents complaining the Superman TV show caused kids to jump out of trees attempting to fly.
If you are concerned about what your child is seeing on TV, you have several options:
- Get involved with what your child is watching and make the call yourself
- Change the channel
- Turn the TV off and have your kids read comics
Now someone is going to say comics aren’t for kids under 13, but I’m going to have to disagree. I’m not going to let my son read The Boys until he is old enough to understand everything that is going on in the title, but as a young tyke, the Johnny DC line is more than age appropriate. So are a most of the titles from the Silver Age. The key factor here is I’m the one getting involved in what my son will watch or read, not some advocacy group.
Get involved in your kid’s life, don’t let them be raised by someone else.
Rant off :)
12 Comments
Don’t forget the Marvel Adventures, Kids eat those up like Hot cakes.
“Get involved in your kid’s life, don’t let them be raised by someone else.”
That’s the truth. The TV is not a baby sitter or a parent.
I knew it. Salieri’s Joe Quesada.
The ratings system is complete B.S. anyway, between this and the “Smoking” designation (out-of-context smoking will soon be strongly considered for an “R” rating) and the fact that sexuality and language are given ten times the puritanical scrutiny that violence receives…
Ah, hell with it…the “Transformers” were created out of a Japanese toy line anyway. Hey, why didn’t they slap this warning on the Pokemon movies?
Oh, and I had to say it:
YOU! ARE! A! TOY!
“Toys are appealing to children.”
This news in from the scientific journal “DUH.”
And marketing be damned, if a kid wants a cool Transformers toy, I don’t see any reason (barring a choking hazard) why that toy being based on a movie or cartoon has any bearing on it. There’s going to come a day when we realize that we’ve coddled our children so badly that they can’t function when they reach adulthood, since they’ve never faced a single challenge that wasn’t mandated to allow them to opt out…
Damn right.
Am not! I just thought that Marvel could stand some promotion if DC was getting it as well.
Just to put things into perspective, the original Megatron toy transformed into a handgun.
Amen
Well just to counterpoint, this isn’t the 50’s (not that it matters). We’ve got ads on the street with models in their birthday suits advertising lingerie. What’s a parent suppose to do, put a burlap sack on their children’s heads during the drive from point A to B? I’m sorry, I get your point really, but there are those who argue about censorship and blame parents for their supposed neglect. Both parents work nowadays (some are single handedly raising their children) and it would be unfair to say “hey, you don’t like what we put out there, that’s your problem” in the sense like some smoker is blowing smoke around and you don’t like it and if you ask for the cigarette to be extinguish, they’ll say “you don’t like it, go somewhere else.” And they’ll be all like “freedom” and “rights” although apparently most about THEIR freedom and rights and screw you if you don’t like what they’re doing. I remember one time on the Today show about some university students broadcasting some kind of self-made porn on university channels and the question was asked if that’s a bad thing. One interviewee was all for it and even noted that if people find it offensive, then don’t watch it in a matteroffactly tone. That got my goat. It’s like the feeling of being over run by crime, graffitti, smog, etc. and you’re being told that if you don’t like it, well, “no one told you to live here.”
“I’m gonna start punching like this, and if you get in the way, that’s your problem.”
There has to be some kind of middleground. Freedom should always go hand in hand with being responsibe too.
Anyway, not saying this has direct relevance to the article here since I think it is a little overreaching (though not saying I don’t get what they’re saying since those who can’t watch a movie certainly can’t necessarily understand what the toy is about… still, it is just a toy). That said, there is a cartoon based on the movie line, so I guess it’ll all sort itself out eventually.
Hey, I totally agree that our children are currently being coddled so closely that they are not going to be able to handle the ‘grown up world’ when they get there. We are constantly hiding things like death, sex, and violence from them, and yet they get all sorts of heavily-laden messages from the media who use those very topics and the feelings associated with them to sell products.
Eventually these kids will grow up to not understand these things or how to deal with them, except that they will know that they feel interested and excited about the subjects and then what? It seems we are raising children who will be so unbalanced and understand themselves and their feelings and their society even more poorly and be more pathetic and sexually and aggressively frustrated than their parents.
‘Age-appropriate’ is a joke. It is a dumbing down of everything, and we are abusing our kids when we practically tell them that at a certain age, they just can’t understand things. I will not lie to my children. I will not say, ‘no honey, nobody really dies’ or that the stork brings babies. on the other hand, that does not mean we have to completely scar them with reality either. Be honest with them, and respect them, and then help them to deal with life, not to just shelter them from it. Talking, and teaching are the answer.
peace