Nickelodeon Limiting Character Usage For Healthy Products
Junk Food Companies Soon To Take A Beating Without Their Child Attraction
You won’t be seeing Jimmy Neutron, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer and the Rugrats on anymore junk food. Nickelodeon, the children’s television network, said it would prohibit the use of its characters on junk food products, except on special occasions like Halloween. Those characters will be allowed to appear only on packaged food products that meet “better for you” criteria established by Nickelodeon’s marketing clients. The changes will become effective in 2009, when the current two-year licensing agreements expire.
The announcement was made just days after Discovery Kids made a similar announcement and nearly a month after 11 major food and beverage companies — including McDonald’s, Kellogg and Kraft Foods — agreed that they would stop advertising unhealthy products to children under 12. Those 11 companies represent two-thirds of the children’s advertising market. In October, Walt Disney announced that its characters would be allowed only on products that met certain nutritional standards. It’s about time! Let’s thank food companies and children’s networks for having contributed to the obesity epidemic among American children.
