We’ve now learned that you really can’t let your Disney guard down, even in the bread aisle. Michael purchased hot dog buns without looking at the package and didn’t see the Camp Rock promotion on the plastic bag until we got them home.
Curse you, Sara Lee Soft & Smooth!
I knew about the Sara Lee/Disney connection after spotting Hannah Montana bread a couple years ago. It was one of the first times I wondered if you could ever really get away from Disney. Hot dog buns? Not really a natural connection, but it must be working for both parties. Sara Lee is on Disney’s websites and Disney is on Sara Lee’s websites (but I’m not linking to any of it).
Hawking bread products seems a strange position to put kids into (bad grammar? Sorry, but I just watched about ten of these and it seems to have rubbed off on me):
There was some question as to whether or not we should actually eat the forbidden buns, but I determined that the damage was already done — we had paid for them.
Tally to date: One Pixar movie and one package of Disney-sponsored buns. Not bad.
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Hehehe… I’ve also run into (and bought) apples and potatoes that were Disney branded… there’s also Princess Spaghettios and Toy Story Mac & Cheese… half the cereal isle has one marketing campaign or another on every box.
Are you kidding? Disney fruit? Wow. And, yeah, the cereal, aisle which is also soups at my grocery store, is a cartoon phantasmagoria. I hardly ever go down it but needed some broth the other day, whoa!
I’d seen Disney stickers on bananas, but potatoes? And soup? And what exactly is the message that kids get when parents says, okay, I’ll buy the Princess soup? It’s a wrapper on a can that gets tossed into the recycling. It has no other purpose but to catch a child’s eye, does it? Lord knows I bought my share of Sponge Bob mac and cheese because my girls claimed it tasted better.
During the pull-up phase, I noticed you could only find ones with Dora or Princess — not a big fan of either due to all the merch tie-ins — so whenever she recognized one or the other, I just told her they were for pooping. We laughed and laughed and laughed.
My daughter and I were wandering through Walmart a few months back marveling at all the food with Toy Story 3 tie-ins. I don’t think I’d ever noticed that before. If asked, she will answer that no, the Toy Story 3 mac and cheese doesn’t taste better than the plain, but who knows if she actually believes it. Maybe I’d set-up a taste test for her to see if it did.