This makes me sick. This isn't surprising or new, but sustained marketing to kids is used to control future purchases as adults and influences parental spending. Here are some ammassed facts.

"...It is all about establishing a relationship early," Paul Kurnit, the president of a marketing firm called KidShop, told the conference on opening day..."Children are important because they not only represent a significant percentage of our customers," a Burger King spokesman said, "but they also have an incredible influence on what fast food restaurant their parents will choose." ...The latest scientific research is also being used to make kids buy things...to make children remember a company's ads and create "brand stickiness"...research has found that one way to make a lasting imprint on a child's mind is to run the same advertisement over and over again. Repeating the same ad for a product is more effective than running a variety of different ads. The more times a child sees exactly the same ad, the more likely he or she will remember the product... "The key to attracting kids," one marketing publication says, "is toys, toys, toys..." ¹

According to Berkeley, Calif., psychologist Allen D. Kanner, PhD

"...the result is not only an epidemic of materialistic values among children, but also something he calls "narcissistic wounding" of children. Thanks to advertising, he says, children have become convinced that they're inferior if they don't have an endless array of new products..." ²

In 1999 James U. McNeal, PhD, author of The Kids Market: Myths and Realities,states:

"Children also influence another $249 billion spent by their parents." ²

Tim Kasser, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., states:

"Psychologists who help advertisers are essentially helping them manipulate children to believe in the capitalistic message, when all the evidence shows that believing in that message is bad for people...That's unethical." ²

Sources
¹ http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1759888,00.html?gusrc=rss
² http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep00/advertising.html
Related Links
http://www.thecorporation.com/
http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/books/schlosser.html

Label I designed for my first beer I ever brewed. It's a nut brown pale esb...

It's such a great DIY project!

A quick thought. I should make a screen of this, to be more of a preachy veg.

So I designed this up for a home brewing beer label contest - hope I win. I have to get it in the mail bright and early so it will be at BYO Magazine by Friday!

This may seem a premature label, since it is for my October pumpkin ale, but I thought it was worth sending in.I kind of like the headless horseman story and thought it would be a good image for a pumpkin ale.

Via Wooster Collective