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I want a Graco
stroller, an Eddie Bauer car seat and a Chicco highchair, or I'm not
coming out.
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It is well known that marketing experts have been diligently working to target ever-younger audiences, but this example seems to be almost a parody of the genre of youth-oriented ads. It appeared in the March 2000 issue of Parenting magazine. It is only the most grotesque of the many ways in which such magazines play on parental guilt in order to sell products. Another entire category involves playing on fears about safety to sell a lot of junk.
Children are increasingly the target of marketing for adult products, such as automobiles and vacations. The pervasiveness of the marketing industry's "ownership" (their term) of children is explored in frightening detail be economist Juliet Schor in her 2004 book, Born to Buy. I highly recommend it for any parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle, as well as any marketing student who still has a conscience.
The problems of over-indulgent
parenting are gaining national attention. See Time's cover
story entitled Who's in
Charge
Here? for some amazing examples of the pernicious effects of
marketing
to kids - and of parental capitulation.