Over the years, Disney has taken a lot of heat for using their brands to promote fast food like Happy Meals. Now they are aiming their promotions in a different direction.
Don’t be surprised if you see Mickey Mouse on egg cartons, Tinker Bell on corn on the cob, or a Zac Efron photo-sticker on an avocado.
I’m not one to recoil at the thought of using celebs to sell items on my kids’ plates. I have been using an eighties poster of a muscled-up Bruce Springsteen to motivate my almost three year-old son (a serious Boss fan) to eat his vegetables. “Come on buddy, you know who always eats his veggies so he can sing Thunder Road and have strong muscles?”
While studies have shown that a little renaming or repositioning can get kids to eat a lot more fruits and veggies, one does worry about yet more marketing messages hitting our kids from every angle. And unlike my own in-house messaging strategy, I can’t control what Disney and my supermarket decide to pitch.
Is my son going to come home one day and tell me he has a craving for some Scarlett Johansson melons? What could I say? We’d have melons.
