: November 2008

Parents, Marketers at Odds over Toy Ads

In a season that inspires earnest letters about toys, one notable batch is being sent not by kids to Santa’s workshop but by parents to the executive suites of real-world toy makers.

The message: Please, in these days of economic angst, cut back on marketing your products directly to our children.

The letter-writing initiative was launched by the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which says roughly 1,400 of its members and supporters have contacted 24 leading toy companies and retailers to express concern about ads aimed at kids.

“Unfortunately, I will not be able to purchase many of the toys that my sons have asked for; we simply don’t have the money,” wrote Todd Helmkamp of Hudson, Ind. “By bombarding them with advertisements … you are placing parents like me in the unenviable position of having to tell our children that we can’t afford the toys you promote.”

The Toy Industry Association has responded with a firm defense of current marketing practices, asserting that children “are a vital part of the gift selection process.”

“If children are not aware of what is new and available, how will they be able to tell their families what their preferences are?” an industry statement said. “While there is certainly greater economic disturbance going on now, families have always faced different levels of economic well-being and have managed to tailor their spending to their means.”

In recent conference calls with investors, toy company executives said they expect to suffer some holiday-season impact from the economic crisis, yet suggested their industry would be more resilient than many other sectors. The toy industry is commonly viewed as recession-resistant, due largely to the parent-child dynamic.

“Parents have trouble saying no,” said Allison Pugh, a University of Virginia sociology professor. She says parents often buy toys to avoid guilt and ensure their children feel in sync with school classmates.

“Even under circumstances of dire financial straits, that’s the last thing parents give up,” said Pugh. “They’ll contain their own buying for themselves before they’ll make their child feel different at school.”

Amanda Almodovar says she encounters such families in her work as an elementary school social worker in Alamance County, N.C., where homelessness and unemployment are rising.

“I had one parent who said she’d prostitute herself to get what her child wants,” Almodovar said. “It’s heartbreaking. They feel inadequate as parents.

“I try to tell them, worry about your home, your heating bill — but they’re the ones who have to look into children’s faces, the children saying ‘I want this, I want that.”‘

Even in some households not in fiscal crisis, there’s a sense that this holiday season is different.

John Schenkenfelder, a financial adviser and father of three in Louisville, Ky., wrote a blog entry this month urging families to scale down their gift-giving and spend more time playing together.

“This has been bugging me for years, even when times were great,” Schenkenfelder said in a telephone interview. “Maybe people will get it this year — they’re so unprepared for this debacle. They’re shell-shocked.”

In Columbus, Ohio, Erin Beth Dower Charron has been trying to brace her 4-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter for more subdued gift-getting this year as the family begins financial belt-tightening.

“My 8-year-old is still holding out hope that Santa will get her that one special gift, but understanding this year may be different,” Dower Charron said. “My son doesn’t understand. Everything he sees, he wants.”

Toy ads on kids’ TV shows make the process harder, she said. “The onslaught seems to be more intense this year.”

Dower Charron was among the hundreds of parents who took up the suggestion to write to toy companies.

“Help me understand why your toy is the better one for my child, and why it should be one of the few I can afford,” she wrote. “Don’t leave that up to my children.”

The director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, psychologist Susan Linn, said she and her colleagues don’t expect toy companies to stop advertising — rather, they want the ads directed at parents.

“It’s cruel to dangle irresistible ads for toys and electronics in front of kids — encouraging them to nag for gifts that their parents can’t afford,” she said. “It’s just not fair.”

The big toy makers aren’t likely to redirect their ads for one fundamental reason, according to Richard Gottlieb, a New York-based consultant to the industry.

“Toy companies advertise to children because it works, to be brutally honest,” Gottlieb said in an interview.

Gottlieb also contends that it’s good for children to encounter toy ads — even in cases where products later turn out to be disappointments.

“It teaches, for very low stakes, how to navigate in our consumer culture,” he said.

“They are going to have to spend the rest of their lives listening to every kind of marketing approach, and childhood is where they will learn to cope with it.”

As for the economic pressure on parents, Gottlieb sounds a fatalistic note.

“Believe me, there are families with much bigger issues on their plates right now then worrying about whether their child will be unhappy because they did not get a particular toy,” Gottlieb wrote in his “Out of the Toy Box” blog. “Delivering disappointment goes with the job of parenting.”

Christmas Story Fans Celebrate 25 Years

Fans of the holiday classic “A Christmas Story” are celebrating the film’s 25th anniversary with a convention and trips to the house where the movie was made.

The 1983 film, an adaptation of Jean Shepard’s memoir of a boy in the 1940s, was set in Indiana but largely filmed in Ohio. The movie starred Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker, a young boy determined to get a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.

The film was a modest theatrical success, but critics loved it. It eventually joined “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street” as a Christmas cult classic.

“It’s a film about being a kid and looking back,” said Brian Jones, who owns the house where the movie was shot and the neighboring museum dedicated to the film.

About 4,000 fans are attending the convention at Cleveland’s Renaissance Hotel, where they’ll meet some of the film’s actors, watch three documentaries made about the film and see the original 1938 fire truck from a famous scene in the movie involving a child’s tongue stuck to a frozen pole.

“It is unbelievable that a movie has touched the lives of millions of families,” said Phil Gillen, son of the late actor Jeff Gillen who played the movie’s worn-out Santa Claus. He traveled from Miami with his family to attend the convention.

Avid fans Mark and Becky Tompkins also traveled to the meetup with their children, Madison, 9, and Brandon, 5.

“It’s a Christmas movie that you can watch and relate to,” Mark Tompkins said. “Everyone, whether they want to admit it or not, really wanted a special gift one holiday.”

Germany Suffering from Santa Shortage

GERMANY is facing a Santa Claus shortage in the run-up to Christmas, as new recruits fail to meet high Teutonic standards of jollity and expertise.

Job agencies, which are currently conducting a desperate last-minute recruitment drive, have reported a distinct lack of jolly, rotund, fluffy-bearded Santas with no criminal records.

Among the tough criteria are a suitably low voice, child-friendliness, good German, not too youthful, and a full repertoire of Christmas poems and songs. For good measure, they must show spontaneity and energy.

“It takes a lot to be a good Santa,” said Tarik Kilinc of the Heinzelmaennchen agency in Berlin. “About 10% don’t make it through the casting process.

“Just handing out presents isn’t enough. Our Santas have to sing songs with the families and talk to the parents about their children and the evening’s arrangements,” he added.

“The kids want to see sleds and reindeer and you need calm nerves to deal with that,” Kilinc said. “Every year it becomes harder to recruit people.”

The shortage has been made all the more acute because of a record number of bookings, as families try to capture the Christmas spirit amid economic gloom. In Berlin alone, job agencies are 150 short of the 500 Father Christmases required for up to 5,000 private parties, school and shopping mall events.

Agencies from Hamburg to Munich face similar problems. Jens Wittenberger, in charge of Santa recruitment at the Jobcafe in Munich, said the demanding standards “put people off”.

“Being Santa is not an easy job,” he said. “To be honest, not many people have what it takes to be a good Father Christmas.”

His recruits are rigorously schooled; learning, for example, how to deal with tricky questions from children such as “Why does your beard look fake?”

Andreas Werhan, 41, a veteran Father Christmas, said: “Children have much higher expectations about gifts nowadays. I’m amazed by some of the presents they receive.”

Despite the stress, Santas can make up to €60 (£50) an hour, said Wittenberger. “That’s not bad, is it?”