Branded

My kids have never seen an episode of Sesame Street. They've never seen Dora the Explorer. No Nickelodeon. No Sponge Bob. No Bob the Builder. While visiting Nana and Papa Starks, Ellen does watch Mickey's Clubhouse on occasion, and I think I've glimpsed Handy Manny and My Friends Tigger and Pooh. (But who the heck is Darby? Whatever happened to Christopher Robin?)

Our computer is our TV, and I never look at the computer and think, "I wonder what's on TV right now?" So Ellen and Jack have no kind of attention span for watching movies, videos, or TV programs.

That said, my kids are apparently the reason for product branding. Ellen has Dora shoes and dishes. And she knows who Dora is. She also has princess dishes, and now I try not use those dishes if at all possible when feeding Jack and Ellen because they spend the whole time talking about who that is at the bottom of the bowl and not eating anything. Jack has a life-sized Elmo, displayed previously on this site, and one of his first 10 words is . . . Elmo. (Or maybe he's saying "amo", as in "te amo, mommy!") Ellen has a Sesame Street potty seat. Jack points out Elmo everytime she's doing her business, and Ellen points out Cookie Monster. Today we identified Big Bird. Ellen has seen "Cars", and her step stool in the bathroom has Lightning McQueen on it. She thinks his name is "carro" though.

The life-sized Pooh and Eeyore don't bother me. They are characters from a book.

That's not all. After one visit to Circuit City with daddy, Ellen emphatically pointed Circuit City out to me the next time we drove by on the highway. I took her with me to Academy to exchange a pair of shoes and the next time we drove by, she hollers out "A-ca-la-ly" from the back seat. She's just as familiar with Super K, Target, United and Market Street (the grocery stores), McDonald's, On the Border, Rosa's, Olive Garden (where she was really, really disappointed that we didn't get to eat grapes -- check out their sign), and Wal-mart, even though we've only been inside some of those places once. And if we ever run out of anything, or even if I just "tell" her we've run out of something like candy, gum, or treats, she says, "We need to go to Wal-mart and buy some more _____."

This post is brought to you by capitalism and the free market.