Frito Lay Inc. last year rolled out a display called Chip City that allows kids to measure themselves, look at themselves in a funhouse mirror, and press a button to hear Chester Cheetah, spokescharacter for its Chee-tos. Since kids want their chips now, the display includes plenty of one-ounce packages on sale for a quarter. Everywhere, the target is younger. Companies that have already saturated the grade school market are turning toward the crib. They tend to interpret your ad literally.
Commercials are shorter.
The line between the sponsor and the sponsored has all but disappeared. Much of kids' entertainment, featuring characters whose licensed images are immediately stamped on toys, sheets, clothes, even food packages, is almost indistinguishable from the commercials that support it. Amid the media clutter, commercials try to entertain, focusing less on the product and more on creating an image. At the same time, movies and TV shows are more intricately linked to the selling of toys than ever before. Hasbro Inc., for example, helped design the car in Warner Bros.' new Batman flick.