This is a shift in the control of play away from children into the hands of toy manufacturers. Toy manufacturers have been producing whole lines of toys in order to increase profits. Each toy has one specific function, so children have to buy lots of them in order to play. The intensification of marketing, especially the television promotion of character toys, is beginning to change what children actually learn in play.
Commercial television fails to educate, inform or inspire our children.
They become jaded with their toys, and mimic in their play what they have seen on television. Business interests trying to maximise profits cannot be expected to worry about cultural values or social objectives beyond the consumerist values that underpin commercial media. The new marketing strategies have not stopped with television and toys. This practice works. From the child's point of view, images from television and toys are literally everywhere.