On the other hand, my brother is lucky my mom is a) one of the least-lazy people on the planet, and b) a health-food freak who has always encouraged her children to eat well and play lots of sports. She studied nutrition when she taught aerobics during the 80s, and a lot of it stuck. My brother plays football, has played soccer and baseball in the past, and is considering lacrosse…AND is a video game fanatic. He regularly works out in his school gym and is more stacked than some guys twice his age, yet still eats pizza and Doritos with his buddies like any normal 14-year-old.

My mom can be a pain about a lot of things (she’s nagged me about my weight problems since I was nine), but some of her suggestions do make sense. I’ve tried to keep as many fresh fruits and veggies in my apartment as my budget and the season allows, and I buy from a farm market ten minutes away whenever I can during the late spring, summer, and fall. (Not only are they cheaper, but they taste better, too.) Cookies are my addiction, so I try to buy ones that are genuinely low in fat and sugar, like Fig Newtons or the hard gingersnaps many stores sell in the late summer and fall. I love to bake and have been working on ways to eliminate fat and sugar in my cakes and cookies without sacrificing taste. (A tip – applesauce does wonders in replacing shortening and makes cakes moist, too. Also try yogurt.)

Even with a busier schedule than my mom or me, it’s not that hard for parents and children to fit in some exercise. Go for a walk around the block or to a local playground. If you have a backyard, park, or even a vacant lot handy, play catch. Even 10 minutes will work wonders.

Let your kids indulge their cravings…in moderation. Don’t give in when they ask for more than they need. (This goes for adults, too – it’s something I’ve been working on myself lately.)

Blaming the media is taking the easy way out. People ought to look at their own habits, not cartoon characters. I didn’t buy candy bars or make fattening cookies because a cartoon character told me so, I did it because I’d done it all my life, and it was a habit.

But habits can be broken…if the person wants to break them.

It makes me rather sad =’[ to think that these insanely awesome characters that made breakfast so fun and exciting, are practically gone from pop culture. Sure, as you said, these characters are still advertised on the boxes of cereal, but it’s totally not the same deal.

I want to watch kids chase a little Irish dude for lucky charms! I want to see silly rabbit one day finally get to eat his Trix; I need to see that rainbow beaked bird eat some more cereal!!

THIS IS MADNESS.

As always we can count on good ol’ Chuck Klosterman for a bit of wisdon:

“[...] [H]ates the way they target children. This is intriguing, because I remember seeing thousands of ‘Just Say No’ advertisements when I was young, and those didn’t seem to take. All those ‘Got Milk?’ ads don’t seem to make people crazy for milk, either. Why is it that the only advertising campaigns that work seem to sell bad things that people actually desire? Isn’t that a weird coincidence?”

(“McDiculous” from Esquire, May 2004)

Children do not want these stupid cereals because the stupid poorly drawn pirate tells them to eat them. They want them because they are pretty much all sugar and have pretty colors. Kids are fucking stupid, but not that fucking stupid. They want things that they like. Kids like the fucking McDonalds and the fucking Cap’n Crunch. Sure it tastes like shit, but it is good tasting shit to some.

It does not matter how well “good” foods are marketed either. It comes down to taste. There is some appeal to certain cereals until the age of 7, but after that kids want what tastes good. Not celery or vegetable juice (which is loaded with salt) or any other “healthy” alternative. Even those fucking singing raisins sold more swag than food.

And as far as everything else goes these cereals are really not that bad. Look at the numbers on the box. Not too problematic. Kids should be out and about playing and shit. Not on the fucking internet playing capncrunch.com minigames. If only the world was not so scary with all the terrorisms and child abductions and murderers on the news (I was going to pun serial killer, but that is fucking hackish.)

The bigger issue here is that this is for childrens under the age of 12. Now I aint know ’bout you folks, but I at the age of 9 years old was not buying my own cereal or junk food. There was really no way I could. I could stop at the local shithole market and buy stuff if I had money. But I did not. I was fucking 10. I did not have a job or other source of income. My parents was buying the products. A lot of taste is learned behavior. Methinks that some lazy parents–who I am picturing as being quite rotund–want to cheap out and put the blame on someone else.

I guess that in the end this is just another example of my fun being ruined because some asshole will not explain to his or her 8 little moron offspring why junk food is meant to be only a small part of a person’s diet and why advertisements need to be viewed with a bit of [I do not know what word I wanted, so madlib this one].

There is also an issue if one does go the route of using popular characters to sell “healthier” items as one is not really educating healthy lifestyle choices but exploiting blind consumption. You know, like I am buying…oh… Ninja Turtles celery because I am loyal to the characters and branded shit not because I want a lower calorie foodstuff.

You have also got to keep in mind that children’s cereals are a very competitive market–worse is that all cereals are pretty much the same (compare energy and nutrition content). Last time I was at the grocer there was an entire aisle of cereal products there for me to choose. Advertising is one way of developing interest in the product. Of course it is not a way to guarantee a customer if they do not like the product, but even I–an educated consumer–have purchased things for which I have viewed ads.

I am all rambley and non-pointed. I apologize for that. Again.

In the lobby of my work building is this little coffee shop that also sells quick breakfast and lunch meals for employees-in-a-rush. Among them are several small, prepackaged bowls of things like Trix and Lucky Charms. There are no kids in the building, so somebody else is eating that, too.

But to your general point, it’s still pretty nuts that food companies are being forced to treat their “wares” the same way Marlboro has to treat cigarettes.

So, these companies looked at the monetary risk that having to changing their products (or having them forcibly discontinued because they are too high in dangerously unhealthy ingredients) because of new government regulations would have versus the financial impact of ceasing TV commercials with cartoon characters and opted for the latter.

In summary: IF YOUR SNACKS AND CEREALS FOR CHILDREN ARE SO BAD THAT YOU WANT US TO BELIEVE THAT YOU WILL VOLUNTARILY STOP TRYING TO SELL THEM TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE, CHANGE THE PRODUCT, NOT THE COMMERCIAL CHARACTERS!