I’ve been looking through your blog and I love it!

It’s amazing how children are bombarded with ads and pressures to want what everyone else has from such a young age. I’m sorry that organic lines are jumping on the bandwagon, too.

Disney had plans to start putting characters on bags of fruit, but I haven’t seen that happen yet. We shall see!

I may not be recommending anything new here, but the book Buy Buy Baby by Susan Gregory Thomas addresses the marketing issue at length and is a good motivator to avoid products, including food, that use children’s characters to market themselves.

Keep up the very interesting blog!

Hi Kristen, thanks so much for stopping by and for the book recommendation! — Lynn

I’ve had similar experiences, so here’s how we deal with it. I tell each kid that they can pick out one item each at the store, no questions asked (healthy, but typical kid marketed). After that, it’s my choice. I find that this is a good compromise and sometimes they surprise me-organic pears or bananas anyone. However, often times I will have 2 overpriced, kid-marketed items in the cart. Sometimes, when I don’t what to go through the kid-marketing run I will sneak off to the store without them.

I’m really looking forward to your interview with the CEO of Honest Kids-way to go.

Great ideas, Sue! Thanks for sharing. Just got back from meeting with him. He was way cool and the Honest Tea offices are amazing. It will be such a fun interview to share – now I gotta get to work on it! — Lynn

I’m disturbed by the way mainstream licensed characters are appearing at Whole Foods. Once free of character marketing, now we who shop organic have the same pressures.

I’ve decided I’m OK with cute images on kids products. I’m not OK with characters. IF it’s not a licensed character…it shouldn’t be more expensive than regular organic products and …I’ll just eat the kid friendly ones too- what’s inherently wrong with a picture that appeals to kids – we buy yogurt with pictures that appeal to adults?

If it supports TV shows and movies and/or encourages consumerism…well then I might have a problem.

Great post incidentally – submit to skirt..I’m stumbling!

Thanks, MC, for your thoughts, compliment, and suggestion. Hey folks, MC is an expert on marketing to children! Check out her blog at http://notquitecrunchyparent.blogspot.com

And by the way, I didn’t see this product at Whole Foods…I saw it at a smaller regional organic chain (My Organic Market).

So I stick with the Cascadian Farms Honey O and granola cereal which they all like better and they don’t advertise to kids.

Lucky you! Thanks for sharing! I just noticed that Honest Kids isn’t overtly marketed to Kids either. I’m interviewing the CEO tomorrow and I’m going to ask him how they made that decision….I bet it was an interesting discussion! — Lynn