I was getting some Apple-Cinnamon Cheerios when I looked on the back of the box and saw a whole thing about how Cheerios wants kids to read and is nice enough to offer a little electronic reading game-type deal. I thought to myself, "Where's the catch?" and sure enough, the whole book that came with it was dedicated to Cheerios. Apparently they were selling a Mr. Snaffelburger-esque device to brainwash kids into loving Cheerios. Either that or they really do care and just figured they'd slip the Cheerios stuff in for familiarity or a minor selling point for kids. I'm kind of frightened by all of this. I'm seriously getting weirded out by seeing something right out of a Mr. Snaffelburger animation. I know it's not quite as bad, but it still makes me think.

What're you guys' thoughts on this? Do you see Mr. Snaffelburgerisms in your day-to-day life? Do you think I'm crazy for thinking this way?

To be honest, I can't really fault them for things like that. It's not like cigarettes, they're not hooking the kids. They're guaranteeing the kids will want Cheerios, eventually the kids will outgrow it, no harm done. I mean, you're going to buy your kids some cereal, it may as well be Cheerios (it's tasty and nutritious ). Yeah, they're doing it as an advertising gimmick, but they're also helping kids learn to read - I don't really see where anybody loses out here.

I see Commie's point on this one. At least Cheerios are (relatively) healthy, and getting kids hooked on those little O's made with four different types of grain by providing a nifty learning aid is better than reeling them into, say, McDonalds on the promise of a cheap plastic gimmicky toy based on the latest Disney offering.

Ri, you do have a valid point though. It's entirely unnecessary for such blatant product placement to be shoved in kids' faces, but then I guess they are entitled to remind the little chaps who subsidised it...

I don't think it's that blatant a Snaffism (as I prefer to call it), to be honest. I've seen worse. Like, over here we have the Walkers "Books for Schools" scheme, which rears it's head from time to time. A very laudable scheme, too; the good people at Walkers fund books for a child's school for redeeming a number of tokens collected from their products. Very laudable, except for the fact that the kids are being cajoled into eating hundreds of packets of crisps (or potato chips, depending on which continent you're on) in order to get a couple of books for their school.

Kids! You can now get books for your school for free, just by eating!! Simply return 100 tokens from any Walkers Crisps packet, and your school can claim a free book!! Yes, you too can ensure the possible future literacy of the country by becoming an obese teenager with severe acne, high cholesterol, weakened kidneys and an increased chance of having a heart attack before the age of 50!!!

Now that, to me, is a true Snaffism!*

* This Snaffism is in no way affiliated to Mr Snaffleburger, but is instead the sole property of Leopold. Leo retains the right to break the legs of anyone using this Snaffism unless the appropriate rights fee of £1000 (in unmarked, non-continuous £20 notes) is placed in a Jiffy bag and left behind the bin outside the Co-Op at 10pm on Friday.

General Mills, who owns Cheerios and is owned by the Betty Crocker company which I assume is owned by some other huge-ass company, does this thing called "Box Tops for Education" where if you redeem X many box tops from General Mills and select Betty Crocker products, a very small donation will be made to the school of your choice, so keep eating kids. I think that's becoming commonplace these days.

Another good one is websites. Each cereal brand has its own website that has goofy games and what-not centering around its cartoon mascot character.


Yeah, for us it's bags o' potato chips. We have crisps, but the difference is that chips (like Lay's) are cut and fried while crisps (like Pringles) are chopped up and baked.


You forgot to add "with limited functionality."

My sister got a video game a bit back--now, she was never really any good at picking out good video games, but honestly this one looked like a fairly innocent standard fantasy adventure type thing. But what do we find out it's really about when I start the game for her? SKITTLES! In order to save the world, you had to collect bleedin' SKITTLES. That disturbs me. "In order to bring light and happiness back to the world, you have to collect all the Skittles ™!" And on and on like that.

Is nothing sacred? (le sigh)

You mean the ones in the US do stuff?? Crikey!

But yeah, it seems getting kids to stuff themselves in the name of charidee seems de rigeur. Sad, really, to see child obesity being given the green light in the name of doing good things...

It's partially the parents who are gullible enough to feed their kids McDonalds for breakfast, lunch and dinner then have the gall to sue McDonalds for it.

When I used to play Neopets, there were sponsor games like that all over the place. Worse, they made me want the thing they advertised. I was almost brainwashed. *Shudders* though I could take some mcdonald's chicken nuggets now... nooo...

A commerical for Snapple came on the other day and I wasn't really paying attention until they started talking about some sweepstakes thing they were sponsoring. They called it a "Snaffle" (you know, a mix of "Snapple" and "Raffle")... all I heard was the word "snaffle" being said in one of those advertisement geared tones. I nearly died.

They do that all the time. Two examples popped in my head at once. One, being chips in those $.50 bags of chips, with the points on the back. Apparently if you collect enough of them you get shocking and amazing prizes. Same with Kool-Aid (excuse spelling, I haven't had Kool Aid in years), where if you drink enough of it, you can collect points. 1000 points or whatever for a CD. It's ridiculous, but it works.

Sodas do that for their websites. They tell you there's a code under the cap, and you must go to the website to see if you've won. It's horrible.