Kids and Ads: Pancake Puffs

My kids are part of a generation that is far less exposed to advertising than I was. At some point when I was not paying particular attention to kids shows it became taboo to put ads in little kids shows. So instead they put sponsorships at the beginning or they will put an ad or mini infomercial at the end of the show. When I was just a foolad, there were 2 ways that we knew all the kick ass, must-have toys: we would look at those awesome catalogs from companies like Best, JC Penney or Service Merchandise or we would also see about 1,000 TV ads per day during shows.

I am not even going to try and hide the fact that I watched WAY too much TV as a kid. As a result, I have themes and ads in my head that I cannot get rid of. Who needs to be able to sing the Facts of Life theme song or the Jacko Energizer ad? If I could hook my brain up to my computer via USB, I would trash all sorts of useless junk that is floating around in there to make room for more useful stuff. Plus I would be filthy rich because I figured out how to jack into my noodle and read it like it was a Linux box and a MySQL database.

The point is that between the new way of doing things and the invention of on-demand, my kids see very few ads. My daughter is nearly five and my son is three. They get between 30 and 60 minutes of TV a day right now. On Sunday, they were watching a show (I think it was The Hoobs). Whatever the show, it ended at about :24, leaving a ton of time between programs. My wife was coming downstairs with the new baby and we both hear our daughter say, “Mom! There is a show on TV about pancake puffs.” She went on to tell us all about how awesome the pan was and how she wanted us to get one. The tastiest pancakes are round, completely round! BTW- the pancake puff ad is on the main page here.

My wife’s immediate reaction was that I let them select their own TV show and that I had been letting them watch an infomercial. She asked the boy what he wanted for breakfast. “Mama, I want you to make me some pancake puffs.”

What’s the moral? There are probably a few good ones like: make sure you know what your kids are watching or don’t let your cow graze in the living room. The real moral is that these pancake puffs look f$@%ing awesome and I am going to try to get Noodad to get one (he’s a sucker for all that stuff) so I can see if its as kick ass as it looks. I mean, who doesn’t want something that IS EASIER TO FLIP THAN A NORMAL PANCAKE? No more pizza deliveries? Damn. I’ve been looking for a way to eliminate that hassle from my life for 25 years now.

As effective as the ad is though, I still prefer this one. I did not know that Katie Holmes was so well endowed.