Children Say the Darndest Things!

The other day I was grocery shopping with the whole family and my DS realized that every kind of food item in the store suddenly had Spiderman plastered all over the boxes. So now he wanted everything...the cheese crackers, cereals, everything! After the hundredth question of "can we get this?", I finally stopped and took the box down for him to study it. I showed him that it was the same box we had at home, but now there was a fancy picture of Spiderman on the front. Then we flipped it over and saw that there was no toy hidden inside, no special shapes---just a picture on the box. Then we hit the dairy case and he saw more fancy pictures and he said (I swear), "Momma, it's not nice of them to make me want all these things just b/c Spiderman's picture is on the box."

Now as a mother I think advertisers should be required to put their fancy pictures on an equal number of vegetables and fruits as useless snack foods. Wouldn't that be new? I can see it now...tantrums in the aisles as kids beg 'please let me have the radishes Mommy!!!' Farmers are always needing subsidies so why don't we make the most prolific advertising agencies take on some farms pro-bono? I know why---b/c then the useless crap on the cookie/candy/chip aisles would get stale and moldy and big business would get a tad upset.

In the same mode, yesterday my DD pulled a bag of diapers off the counter in excitement b/c I had finally bought a pair with Dora the Explorer on them. I thought the pictures might entice her to move on to the pull-up kind and boy did it! She raced me upstairs to get them on her little hynie. She even flashed them to her Daddy when he got home later.

Anyway so this thought led me to a new one, unrelated to food (imagine that). I have challenged myself to start taking a hard look at our buying impulses. How often do I fall for a pretty package when what is inside the box is exactly the same as what I already have at home? I bet I will be surprised. So if you come across a good example in your life, let me know so I won't feel so alone ;o)