Search

I Made It Myself... Kinda

[ by Jack Szwergold ]

Whether using coloring books, building blocks, or leftover salami, kids like to create things. Savvy marketers know all about this. They also know that associating their brand with something that appears to encourage creativity (or the '90s equivalent-interactivity) is one of the best ways to develop a postitive (and lucrative) brand image.

Legos R.I.P.
Once simply a sort of building blocks, Legos have been repurposed to compete with the action-figure/playset market. While you can still purchase the all-purpose Legos, a good chunk of the modern Lego line is made up of kits that are intended to create one object and one object only-a spaceship, a car etc. They thus give the semblance of creating something without actually leaving anything open to the imagination.

Follow the Maze of Flavor
While it may be hard to create a truly challenging puzzle, it's not that hard to create an advertisement that looks like a challenging puzzle. Advertisements as puzzles and games are patronizing, not challenging. Readers' "reward" for looking at the ad is flattery.

Michael Jordan: The Coloring Book
Branded coloring books discourage the single most creative element of coloring with coloring books-experimenting with colors and color combinations. With Space Jam coloring books and the like, children are coloring things they have already seen in the film so there is an inherent bias to use the "right" colors. Bugs Bunny is not red and Michael Jordan is not green. This might be useful to children who want to pursue a career in the assembly line world of studio animation, but since most of these jobs are already filled by kids in Korea, it's basically a waste of potential.

Gender Based Crayons
Yep, girl crayons, as opposed to those crummy boy crayons.

My First Sony
Presumably the name My First Sony means a kid is getting more with this than a toy boom-box, and that's right--they're getting a lifelong relationship with the global media conglomerate. Fortunately, none of these porducts come prepackaged with tapes and CDs of Sony artists like Mariah Carey, Billy Joel, or Meatloaf.