When is it enough for a company? Must they always grow? And how is that even possible, for every company to always grow? Does Mattel really want world toy domination? I don’t get it.

@Blue Milk, thanks for the link. I see in South Australia, at least, there’s a threat to legislate junk food advertising. Is that you and if so, what do you think of that?

Here’s where I see the problem. In order to rise through the clutter to attract kids and parents, toy companies think they need to aggressively advertise to kids. The ones that can do this effectively are the big boys – Mattel, Hasbro, etc.

Now, Melissa and Doug and a few other growing toy companies have avoided this trap and are slowly growing and gaining distribution but nothing like Mattel. interestingly, and I just wrote about this on my site, this attraction to licensed, cheaply made, heavily advertised toys is an English speaking country thing – in Europe, the most popular toys are…not licensed, not cheapy, and open ended.

Is this due to regulation or is it due to culture? Perhaps both. What we as parents can do is to continue to grow this grassroots movement toward “good for you” toys until one of the larger companies notices and starts to try a different business model – higher priced/better made/higher margin toys with less advertising. Not to get into the nitty-gritty of a toy marketing business plan but, this strategy can work.

Instead of worrying about excessive marketing to kids, let’s tell corporations what parents really want. From Parents for Ethical Marketing….

Oh! And I forgot to caption the Bratz coloring book cover in the post. Here goes:

“With lips like these, who needs a nose?”

And I want those stupid Brand Facts and Values commercials off the air all together. Their tag line is “Brand power helping you buy better” when in fact they are just shoving another crappy, overpackaged, no-value product at me that costs way too much money. Beleive me there are real food meals you can cook in 30 minutes or less, you don’t need the lastest 8 minute heat and go meal. That’s just gross.