I love this post about the fiendish marketing ploys being used to reach toddlers and saps parents and I particularly enjoy the author’s own shopping guidelines. I’ve posted a few times myself on similar themes like here on princess paraphernalia, and here on Bratz dolls.
But I have to say that on a lot of this stuff I am caving, big time (we’ve got Baby Einstein and Sesame Street, moving rapidly on to Thomas the Tank Engine and The Wiggles, in fact I was a little confused reading this piece with all the quotes attributed to Thomas). And I so wanted to be the mother who’s child listened to our music, not irritating nursery rhyme CDs.
Cut me loose, feminist mothers. I’m holding you back, go on ahead without me. You’ll never make it across the capitalist badlands with me, I’m too slow and too distracted by all the shiny new kids’ toys. Please, for your own sakes, just leave me here and forge on ahead yourselves. At least some mothers will make it across to the other side, but with me along you don’t stand a chance.
P.S the ‘feathersword’ in the title is a reference to The Wiggles in case you’re too cool for school and haven’t been sullied by this stuff yet.
blue milk 
But noooo! We don’t want to leave you in the capitalist badlands! Who’ll save us from the Bratz Dolls guarding the final passage to collectivist utopia?
http://pressposts.com/Politics/Falling-on-my-feathersword/
Submited post on PressPosts.com – “Falling on my ?feathersword?”
You are being way too hard on yourself 🙂 Little kids love Thomas and Sesame Street for good reasons, and speaking as a former pre-k educator, I have no problem with those shows. The characters move and speak slowly (and they are really freaking cute). It can be hard to resist their merchandising, but at least there is some substance to them. Regarding Baby Einstein, the only dvd we had by them I called Baby Crack because it was full of spinny objects that mesmerized Bean in a scary way, so I gave it away pronto.
Wiggles or no, somehow I think Anais is going to turn out marvelous.
Tickets for ‘Pop go the wiggles’ go on sale July 2nd at 9am. Be there or be square. I’ll be the guy wearing this Wiggles T-shirt. http://www.thewigglesshop.com/images/t-shirt_adult_retro_black.jpg
Aww bianca bean, tigtog, and matt – such upbeat parents to share the parenting world with. Thank you for your comments.
[…] And you know, I come across all crunchy granola but I’m not really that crunchy granola. In fact my friend, who is that crunchy has begun to tease me about my blog. She has a point. Lately I have written about slings, Montessori schooling, vegetarianism, co-sleeping, homebirth, breastfeeding, veggie gardens, and just generally chewing the granola loudly and crunchily. Total fraud. Actually, we’re a household who swears (why yes, in front of the children too), watches TV, plays video games (some of us at least, and semi-violent ones even), eats take-away food (yes, also fast food), uses disposable nappies (ok, but we use the biodegradable ones so is that sort of crunchy?) and buys plastic toys. […]