Toy Commercials Are Being Replaced by Something More Nefarious
Mike Morris, a father of three daughters in a suburb of Dallas, hasn’t had a traditional cable-TV subscription at his house since 2014. When his family visits his father-in-law on holidays, he feels good about that decision all over again.
At home, Morris’s two youngest, ages 8 and 4, only watch shows on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, which don’t show commercials. But at their granddad’s house, they get a rare glimpse of broadcast channels such as Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Like clockwork, after about 30 minutes of TV, they come bounding his way, begging for new toys. “Any toy that has pink on it,” Morris told me, “it’s ‘Daddy, can I have this? Daddy, can I have this?’”
Kids like Morris’s, who rarely or never see toy commercials, because they don’t watch broadcast TV at home, are part of a growing population. To be, and the same report projected that this number would rise to one in four by 2022.
