Teen 'Transformers' targetting toddlers
Sunday, July 8, 2007
AT LEAST that's the complaint from advocate group Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood. Last week, it complained to the US Federal Trade Commission that DreamWorks and Hasbro were going after preschoolers with their "widespread and irresponsible" marketing of the movie.
Susan Linn, a psychologist who co-founded the organisation, is particularly irked that Hasbro toys tied to the movie are labelled as appropriate for children as young as three even though the movie is rated PG-13. "Movie studios have been using toys to market movies in unfair ways for a long time," says Linn. "But this is a movie that was designed from the beginning to sell toys and that makes this case particularly egregious."
Transformers definitely isn't for children. The live-action movie features a menacing array of cars and planes that twist themselves into blood-thirsty alien robots.
The movie, based on the line of toys Hasbro introduced with much success in 1984 and directed by Michael Bay, specifically aims to maintain the brutal Transformers mythology. In fact, it is packed with so much violence that one of its stars, Shia LaBeouf, has said in interviews that Steven Spielberg, the executive producer, narrowly avoided an R rating. A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America, which bestows ratings on movies, declined to comment.
For its part, Hasbro greeted the complaint with a yawn. "All of our Transformers toys ... are fun and very appropriate for kids based on the age code marked clearly on packaging," a spokesman said in a statement. Paramount Pictures, which owns DreamWorks, declined to comment.
Linn's group also got a shrug from the Toy Industry Association, which monitors toy safety and standards. "We encourage parents to read the age grading on the package, which shows the appropriate age for safe and fun play," says a spokeswoman for the association.
But the Federal Trade Commission, which monitors the marketing of R-rated movies to children, may be the only friend the group needs.
While an FTC spokeswoman, Jackie Dizdul, wouldn't confirm whether the agency has any plans to expand its monitoring to PG-13 movies, she says: "We are very interested in what the group has to say." New York Times
Susan Linn, a psychologist who co-founded the organisation, is particularly irked that Hasbro toys tied to the movie are labelled as appropriate for children as young as three even though the movie is rated PG-13. "Movie studios have been using toys to market movies in unfair ways for a long time," says Linn. "But this is a movie that was designed from the beginning to sell toys and that makes this case particularly egregious."
Transformers definitely isn't for children. The live-action movie features a menacing array of cars and planes that twist themselves into blood-thirsty alien robots.
The movie, based on the line of toys Hasbro introduced with much success in 1984 and directed by Michael Bay, specifically aims to maintain the brutal Transformers mythology. In fact, it is packed with so much violence that one of its stars, Shia LaBeouf, has said in interviews that Steven Spielberg, the executive producer, narrowly avoided an R rating. A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America, which bestows ratings on movies, declined to comment.
For its part, Hasbro greeted the complaint with a yawn. "All of our Transformers toys ... are fun and very appropriate for kids based on the age code marked clearly on packaging," a spokesman said in a statement. Paramount Pictures, which owns DreamWorks, declined to comment.
Linn's group also got a shrug from the Toy Industry Association, which monitors toy safety and standards. "We encourage parents to read the age grading on the package, which shows the appropriate age for safe and fun play," says a spokeswoman for the association.
But the Federal Trade Commission, which monitors the marketing of R-rated movies to children, may be the only friend the group needs.
While an FTC spokeswoman, Jackie Dizdul, wouldn't confirm whether the agency has any plans to expand its monitoring to PG-13 movies, she says: "We are very interested in what the group has to say." New York Times
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