The Content of Children's Toy and Food Commercials

Abstract

Pre-Christmas Saturday morning message strategies and presentational techniques on national network television programs.Each Saturday morning children might be exposed to as many as fifty toy and food commercials that are carefully designed to teach and persuade them. In addition, the messages present extensive incidental information concerning social attitudes and behavior.A recent set of articles in thisJournal (2,3,4) and the present symposium explore several aspects of this process. However, there have been only two major analyses of the content of children's television advertising. Barcus (1) monitored four Saturday mornings, analyzing 31 1 commercials from three networks and one independent station. He found that the most frequently presented product categories were for cereals (23 percent), toys (23 percent), other foods and snacks (23) percent), and candies and sweets (21 percent). Winick, Williamson, Chuzmir, and Winick (5) examined 236 selected commercials submitted by children's advertisers. Their study dealt primarily with food ads: snacks and desserts (22 percent), cereals (20 percent), candy (16 percent), drinks (16 percent), and other food and restaurants (15 percent). Animation was used in almost half of the ads, slogans were employed in three-fifths of the commercials, premium offers were featured in one-tenth of the commercials, and the product was associated with fun in two-fifths of the cases. Many food ads referred to sweetness but fewer discussed nutrition, and ads almost never suggested that the child ask the parent to buy the product.

Dual-Modality Disclaimers, Emotional Appeals, and Production Techniques in Food Advertising Airing During Programs Rated for Children

“…Stern and Harmon (1984) reported that 9.3% of ads in programs with signifi cant child viewership had dual-modality disclaimers. In earlier studies, the use of disclaimers varied from 10% with a visual or dual-modality disclaimer (Barcus 1975), to 15% of ads airing after school and 19% of weekend ads having a disclaimer (Barcus 1977), up to 31% with a visual or dualmodality disclaimer (Atkin and Heald 1977). Hoy and Stankey (1993) reported none and Hoy and Andrews (2004) reported 8.5% of the disclosures in their prime-time samples were dual modality.…”

Food and Beverage Marketing to Children and Youth: Trends and Issues

“…In the non-Christmas portion of the ad year, candy and cereal account for more than 60% of the ads viewed. Toy ads gain center stage in the Christmas season, accounting for 50% or more of all ads aired in that time frame (Atkin & Heald, 1977;Barcus, 1976Barcus, , 1980Condry et al, 1988;Harrison & Marske, 2005;Kunkel, 2001;Kunkel & Gantz, 1992). Content-nutrition coding of current food ads reveals diets exceeding recommended daily values (RDVs) by nearly a cup of sugar.…”

Saturday Morning Children's Television Advertising: A Longitudinal Content Analysis

“…Data for 1971and 1975 were derived from the food advertisement logs reported by others (Barcus, 1971;Barcus & Wolkin, 1977). Although several other studies have examined food advertisements on Saturday morning children's television (Atkin & Heald, 1977;Brown, 1977;Cotugna, 1988;Cuozzo, 1971;Doolittle & Pepper, 1975;Gussow, 1972;Kotz & Story, 1994;Winick, Williamson, Chuzmir, & Winick, 1973), they did not report food advertisement logs, were not limited to Saturday morning network programming, and/or presented data more limited in scope for the same time period reported by Barcus (1971) or Barcus and Wolkin (1977).…”