Toy Ads: Background Readings

BUY ME THAT: THE POWERFUL INFLUENCE OF TV TOY COMMERCIALS, HOW TV TOY COMMERCIALS INFLUENCE OUR KIDS

©2008 Frank Baker

Suggested background/articles:

• How to Teach Kids that Ads Are Manipulating Them
• How Do Toy Commercials Appeal To Kids In the Post Saturday Morning Cartoon Era?
• 250 Children’s TV Ads Analyzed
• Selling Gender: Exploiting Gender Stereotypes for Profit
• Cars for Boys, Dolls for Girls: Toy Ads Still Sexist
• Toy Makers Caught in New Gender Flap — But Are They at Fault?
• No kidding, kids fall for witty ads with catchy jingles
• Mix of Traditional, Digital Ads Drive Toy Shopping
• How Toy Ad Vocabulary Reinforces Gender Stereotypes
• Teaching The Tricks To Our Kids
• CARU cites toy ad maker
• Toy Fair 2007: Making It Pop
• Sales techniques to attract youngsters
• Tutored by Barbie and Bratz, girls grow up fast
• I Want That! critical thinking/viewing of holiday toy ads
• Holiday Toy Ad Tactics
• Toymaker Mega Pitches to Parents
• Toy story (creation, production, distribution)
• Ed value of tech toys questioned
• Top 10 Toys– Then & Now
• Tech dominates list of predicted top selling toys 
• Toy-makers Make Pitch to U.S. Hispanic Market
• Discover: As Seen On TV
• Toy Trends-2004
• Toy $tory
• Toy Ads on TV (regulation rules)
• The Depiction of Gender Roles in Toy Ads
• Online toys, the new sales ploy
• So-called `Toy Guy’ advocate paid for TV pitches 
• Rewriting the Toy Story
• Girls in ‘tween’ years are challenge to toy industry
• Cable Characters Help Empty Parent’s Wallets 
• Media educator gives students a dose of reality on toy advertising 
• Kids In Their Prime Time
• Kids Who Watch Less TV Demand Fewer Toys
• Barbie, Bratz and Age Compression
• Tune In To Ads With Children
• Advertising to Children
• Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children
• Three Lesson Media Unit- Toys, Advertising
• Content Analysis of Children’s TV Advertising Today
• TV & Commercials
• Media Aware-Gender
• Gender Differences in Children’s Toys
• How Ads Get Kids To Say, I Want It!
• Toy Advertising & The Impressionable Mind of Youth 
• Media savvy kids are goal of video program
• Related: Food Ad Tricks (Zillions) NOTE: large file- will take time to download
• A Sociological Analysis of Children’s Television Advertising
  Saturday morning fever: the hard sell takeover of kids TV
  (Mother Jones Sept 1986)