My kids attend a great public school here in Minneapolis and as you might suspect, I keep my eye on commercialism creep there. It is rarely a problem. One day I did notice a busload of kids running into school with brand-new Target bookbags, straight from a Target-sponsored trip to the zoo. I bit my tongue.

Last week my daughter came home with an offer to participate in the McDonald’s All-American Reading Challenge. For every ten books she reads, she gets a Happy Meal. (Didn’t they learn anything from the report card-Happy Meal fiasco?) I wrote the teacher, declining the invitation and asking for an alternative reading “incentive” for my daughter — a book, perhaps?

Another parent brought this one to my attention. It came home with her son from the school lunchroom. It’s a bookmark with a word search on it. Educational!

Find the seven words hidden below that can lead you to a healthy day.

See the first word in the list? DORITOS?

But see, PepsiCo isn’t saying that DORITOS will lead you to a healthy day. That would be crazy!

The instructions say to find the seven words.

And the list has eight.  

Read: FTC Hands Kids Over to Junk Food Marketers, Defying Global Principles

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24, 2008 at 5:49 am and is filed under Corporate Contradictions, McDonalds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.