The only feasible answer is a comprehensive approach that starts with a ban on all such advertising. Let's save the spotted owl, but let's put Tony the Tiger to sleep. Our society only now is learning the dangers posed by the use of animated characters in advertising. Recently the Center for Science in the Public Interest called for the elimination of the Budweiser Frogs, claiming that Anheuser-Busch used such characters to target children. Never one to leave a trend alone, the Federal Trade Commission has begun to look at how liquor and beer companies attract the kiddies through the use of cartoon characters.
Animated characters tempt and bedevil our children.
Nowhere is this as apparent than in ads for breakfast cereals. On the pretense of selling a product, these cartoon hucksters actually promote an agenda of anti-social behavior involving violence, theft, deception and humiliation. These ads are the cereal killers of our kids' self-esteem. In commercial after commercial marauding children pursue this differently-abled small person, their goal to rob poor Lucky of his Lucky Charms. Apparently immune to such concepts as good manners and paying for stuff, these young ruffians will employ any underhanded trick to obtain Lucky's yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers.