My
brothers and I fought over who got the prize in our cereal box each week. With
our corn flakes, we usually got one box of sweetened cereal a week, usually,
Super Sugar Crisp, which had the best toys, including genuine Hot Wheels
.
.
Later, the prize ended up on the box rather than in it, those cut-out cardboard records of The Archies that sounded like tin on my tiny record
player that could not have thrilled us more.
By the time my children
became cereal eaters who fought over prizes, the quality of the toys had gone
way down, plastic rather than metal, generic rather than celebrity.As the Internet became popular, prizes became available online, with secret words children could enter on special web sites. Each box carried the warning to be sure to ask an adult before getting online.
Today, after several years away from eating cereal, I
found myself staring at the back of a box of Frosted Flakes, with scenes from
the new Spider-Man movie. The kiddies can redeem the secret codes for free
movie tickets. There is no mention of asking mom and dad for permission,
because there is no web address.
Here’s what it says:
“Listen to your Spidey senses and grab your
smartphone.”
“Go to the App Store or Android Market on your
smartphone.”
“Download the ‘Kellog’s’ amazing Spider-Man exclusive
app.”
“Point your smartphone camera at the scene to the right
for an exclusive clip from the Amazing Spider-Man!”
Our children aren’t the
target market for sweet cereals. They were teenagers before they got cell
phones, and they still don’t have smartphones. Can it be true that enough unsupervised
and tech savvy 8-year-olds have smartphones that a national ad campaign that
requires them can be successful?
I would be willing to bet that many, many eight years-olds have better phones than you and I. ~Kelly
ReplyDeletePerhaps, sadly, Kelly, but we are blessed. I'll bet not many of them have Six-String Samurai on DVD.
DeleteI know that my 8 year old granddaughter doesn't have one and only a very few of her friends have phones at all and they are emergency call home kind of phones. They can't even call one another but I bet by 10 those statistics will have changed!
ReplyDeleteHi Grandma Kc. I suspect you are right, but our kids, from the time they were 8, insisted that "all our friends have phones." At 14, they use the same technique now, even though it didn't work the first time: "all our friends wear two-piece swimsuits," "all our friends are single dating."
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