Hey Kids, This Is Advertising!

I think this is total­ly blog wor­thy and an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion starter. I took the kids to Burger King for lunch on Saturday. (It was a bribe for good behav­ior while gro­cery shop­ping and also a chance to get them sug­ared up for rak­ing leaves in the yard.) Of course they get a toy in their kids meal. Along with the toy, there was a lit­tle piece of paper show­ing how to put every­thing togeth­er and then push the but­ton to make the toy go shoot­ing across the floor.

And then, there was this. In big, bold, block let­ters — Hey Kids This Is Advertising! Now that I’m reflect­ing on it, I’m not quite sure what to think. At the time, I smirked. I almost LOL’ed but some­thing stopped me. I think it was the inde­ci­sion on whether this was a good or bad thing.

On one Whopper-filled hand I thought, “It’s a good thing that they are iden­ti­fy­ing and in some way sep­a­rat­ing the adver­tis­ing push from the help­ful fun part.” On the other hand, occu­pied by a 48 ounce “small” cup of sug­ary Dr. Pepper, I find the tone of the state­ment to be, “Hey Kids, this is adver­tis­ing and does­n’t it look cool!”

Because real­ly, the whole thing is adver­tis­ing. The bag, the toy, the coupon, the entire con­cept of kid’s meal is adver­tis­ing. So what’s the point of putting that state­ment on there? That’s the ques­tion I put to you.