Commercials and the Media

Selling (to) Kids: Advertising, Children, Youth and Commercial Culture Advertising for children and youth has always had a special appeal. Gen X’ers remember the Toys ‘R’ Us song, “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us kid,” and link it to their childhood—even if they never went to a single Toys ‘R’ Us store. They invariably saw the commercials multiple times if they had a TV in their home.

The commercials showed children blissfully happy because they had toys galore—and the aim of the ad campaign was to get kids interested in consumerism. On the surface, it seems like a harmless engagement. However, from the standpoint of critical theory, turning kids into consumers perpetuates the power structure of the capitalist system in the U.S.—that is how the Frankfurt School would argue it.

This paper will use critical theory—the idea of the Frankfurt School that media can be deconstructed to reveal the sociological and psychological dynamic between the ruling class and the working class. Using critical theory it will examine 3 ads from different companies to show why when President Coolidge said, “The chief business of the American people is business,” he could have easily been talking about the way corporate America peddles cheap toys to kids via the commercial culture and ropes them into the club of endlessly buying.

According to the Frankfurt School, the culture industry and consumerism were responsible for turning human beings in the 20th century into empty, vacuous, sated buyers of goods and services that they really had no need or use for (Jeffries). Whybrow notes that “the human animal is a curiosity-driven pleasure seeker easily seduced” (111), and that this seduction is particularly the purpose of the commercial culture.

Bernays, after all, understood how to use psychology to lure adults into desiring what companies had to sell them—all by using advertising to appeal to their senses and stimulate their impulses (Jones). The same method applies for advertising to children and youth: by appealing to their natures as children, they can become consumers for life, chasing the dream of commercial happiness all throughout adolescence and adulthood, so long as they continue to submit themselves to the commercial culture.

In the vintage 80s Toys ‘R’ Us commercial, the toy company advertised its products to kids by featuring several children over the course of the 30 second spot all singing along to the same song promoting Toy ‘R’ Us toys.

The song became like a gold record among kids in the 80s, and as Dunn, Gilbert and Wilson state, after seeing the commercial, the “Toys R Us kid would likely entreat his mother to reveal which of the toys she was planning to buy him the following day, sincerely believing that this knowledge would make him happy” (121). Thus, the child would be absorbed into the world of commercialization at a young age, uniting childhood innocence and happiness not with any type of spiritual joy but rather with materialism.

The child in the 80s toy commercial lived in a room surrounded by Toys ‘R’ Us products and rode a giant toy train in a circle around her room. Her room was like toy paradise—and the way to paradise was through the spending of money on toys.

Some kids in the commercial only one had one toy—a bike, for example, which was being peddled down the sidewalk, evidently showing that the child was on his way, racing into adulthood where the toys he would prefer would be cars, clothes, electronics and so on.

The important thing, from a critical perspective, was that the child link happiness to consumerism and make joy synonymous with the possession of “stuff.” Were George Carlin alive today, he would surely make the connection between the Toys ‘R’ Us commercial and the perpetuation of consumerism: the culture industry was planting the seeds of consumerism into the child targets of its advertising. As Jurin et al.

point out, “Consumerism is more than just buying stuff; as George Carlin would say, it is about a way of life. In 1776, advertisements did not exist as we know them today” (40)—and that is because the way of life has changed: the true rulers of the U.S. emerged following the Industrial Revolution. America became a business, as President Coolidge indicated in 1925 and as Paddy Chayevsky reiterated in the film Network when Arthur Jensen pronounces, “The world is a business, Mr.

Beale!” But toy companies were not the only ones capitalizing on childhood innocence by luring children into a lifestyle of patterned behavior based on the desire to consume. The fast food industry also had an incentive to get them young—and that is why in two McDonald’s commercials, each a fifteen second spot, the fast food behemoth uses knowledge and technology to identify itself with natural childhood tenacity, curiosity and the desire to learn and use technology.

In the first fifteen second spot from a 2018 campaign for Happy Meals, McDonald’s shows a young African American family: Mom, and two small children seated at a clean booth in McDonald’s by the a large window on which the bottoms of the “Golden Arches” can be seen. The same arches are prominently displayed on the tops of the two Happy Meal boxes that sit atop the booth table.

African American Mom is clearly working class—she is wearing a blue plaid button up (unbuttoned) overtop a green-gray t-shirt. Little Miss is sitting upright by her side and across the table is Junior sipping on his milk. The focus of the commercial is not the food—but the fun and games that come with enjoying a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.

Thus, the commercial uses the “fun” factor that Toys ‘R’ Us exploited in the 80s and unites it with its need to sell food to consumers. The Happy Meal is a way to get the kids in the door early and get them to be lifelong consumers—and the hook that the Happy Meal comes with in 2018 is made possible by McDonald’s partnership with National Geographic Kids.

The commercial shows that in the Happy Meal are National Geographic Kids Weird but True fun fact cards that tell the consumer all about something weird but fun found in nature. The commercial shows Little Miss reading the card over her Chicken McNuggets, which appear in the background, crisp, golden and delicious-looking. In her left hand is a single golden fry ready to be consumed. After Little Miss reads the weird but true fun fact, Junior makes a joke about milk and the family laughs.

The commercial ends with the viewer, if a child, likely lured into thinking that he must get Mom to take him to McDonald’s fast so he can get a fun fact card and have a good time eating good food and learning. The commercial uses a child’s natural desire to learn about the world as a way into the child’s heart.

If the Frankfurt School is about using critical theory to show how “cultural forms have the power to construct 'false needs', to indoctrinate and manipulate men and women into social conformity and subordination” (Nava 2014), the McDonald’s commercial uses images of food, family happiness, and learning to create in the child a “false need” for trivial information that comes in the form of a fun food box.

This “false need” is equally made apparent in the company’s other 15 second spot, which shows an African American family—this time Dad and two Little Misses, the young girls on either side of the booth and the Dad in the middle on the window seat. Dad is wearing a gray-green plaid button up shirt (also unbuttoned) to show his working class ethic.

The Golden Arches are on the window behind and are again featured on the Happy Meal boxes which also show a golden yellow happy face smile on their fronts, reinforcing the idea that when kids go to McDonald’s they have a lot of fun there. The commercial does not showcase its weird but true fun facts gimmick. Instead it focuses on tweens’ love of smart phones, apps and technology.

The commercial shows Dad acting confused about the tweens’ fun as he looks from one to the other: they are playing with their phones, taking pictures of one another after downloading the McDonald’s McPlay app. The commercial explains that one can scan the Happy Meal toy “to unlock even more fun” (Happy Meal Commercial McDonald's April 2018 National Geographic Kids Weird but true!).

The commercial tells the child watching to “Ask your parents to download the app today and you can enjoy it with the goodness of milk and apple slices!” as it shows Dad now sitting close to his daughters enjoying the app with them. This is followed by an image of milk, apple slices, crispy golden nuggets, golden fries and the Happy Meal box smiling brightly at the viewer.

The commercial thus uses technology to appeal to the older child who wants more than a fun fact card: McDonald’s recognizes that today’s young consumers are digital natives who thrive on technology and who want to be engaged by way of technology (Prensky). Technology is a huge draw for youths as both Prensky and the Frankfurt School realized: technological forms of entertainment get youths into the culture industry early on and keep them hooked.

One example of this is with the Tekken 4 commercial, which comes in at minute long and is an older commercial from the early 2000s. The commercial starts with a youth in his late teens waking up to the sound of an alarm clock buzzing, alerting him that it is time to get up for some important things that day.

The youth does not just get out of bed normally, but whacks the clock with his palm and then cries out, “Silence!” before leaping up on his bed in fighting stance and then pouncing off the bed and into the kitchen. In the small kitchen the youth opens the fridge to make breakfast, selects a single egg, and says, “Prepare to die!” before practicing further karate moves in a silly and humorous fashion.

“Egg, meet skillet!” he finally says, crushing the egg in his hand and splattering it everywhere. The commercial then cuts to images of the actual video game in game play mode. The commercial even uses a hint of sexuality to appeal to adolescents, showing a female video character shaking her hips as the narrator of the commercial voices the words “new moves” to describe the quality of the video game.

This use of sexuality as a lure is right out of the Bernays playbook (Jones) and shows that even youths are not free from the allurements of sex when it comes to companies advertising their products. The commercial fits in with the idea of children becoming consumers for life from a young age as it shows a teen who is totally consumed with Tekken 4—so totally consumed with it that it dominates his thinking from sunrise to sunset: his whole life has become like a life lived through Tekken 4.

He is obsessed, but his energy and enthusiasm are intoxicating and contagious. The youth watching the commercial will be mesmerized by its humor and attracted by the content of the game itself. At the end of the commercial, the teen does a spin kick when causes the door of the oven to fall off, adding even more humor to the commercial and eliciting a laugh from the viewer.

Now that the commercial has made the viewer laugh, the viewer will want to pay back the producers of the commercial by going out and buying the product. It is an exchange: the viewer gets to laugh and the producer gets to receive the patronage of the viewer. These three companies—Toys ‘R’ Us, McDonald’s and Namco (the company that made Tekken 4)—all approach the child and youth audience in different ways.

Toys ‘R’ Us approached the child audience by inviting the child into a kind of paradise land where all things toys are possible. Every child is enamored of this world and sings the same toy world song about not wanting to grow up because life is so much better when one is a Toys ‘R’ Us kid.

This has a profound psychological impact on the child and makes the child think that happiness can only be obtained by way of the toy industry and that one must never leave the toy industry as one ages because that would mean an end to the fun and happiness. Thus, the Toys ‘R’ Us commercial gets the young consumer to buy into the idea of being a consumer for life.

The McDonald’s fifteen-second spots use trivia (learning) and technology (the smart phone app) to attract kids and tweens to the fast food chain and its Happy Meal products. The gimmick here is that the Happy Meal and McDonald’s in general is a place where working class families can come to have fun and enjoy good food (apple slices and milk, after all).

By hooking kids with the concept of food, fun and games, McDonald’s appeals to the digital natives of the next generation who have grown up with technology and who want to know fun facts so that they can be ready for trivia night when they are in their 20s, still not married, still without a job even though they dropped $40k on a degree—but what matters is that they are still able to go out with friends to the local pub and engage in trivia fun time, just like when they were kids.

The commercial does not explicitly state all of this, but a deconstruction of the narrative and a recognition of what young adults do now with their Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday nights shows that they are already enamored of trivia—and so McDonald’s is starting them off young. The partnership with National Geographic, moreover, allows that latter company to promote its magazine subscription, movies, website and more. Finally, there is the Namco commercial advertising Tekken 4 from the early 2000s.

It shows the nature of the exchange most fully: the child is now a teen and is on his own and independent. His home is empty. His fridge is bare. All that matters is that he has his video games. He is still very much a Toys ‘R’ Us kid, mentally speaking. He may not be able to afford other nice things, but for Namco that does not matter because the kid is willing to spend what money he has on video games.

His whole life mirrors that one thing he does most—which is entering into an alternate dream world where games are the main point of life.