Licensed characters on clothing - Page 2

[gret the great]

Nope

My kids don't wear it. I avoid it even on toothbrushes (you know how hard it is to find aplain kid's toothbrush?-aquafresh now makes them with plain animals & that is good). Anyhoo-my mom says oh, it's educational, but even the PBS stuff has heavy marketing- even if there are no commercials on the station. Elmo is a logo just like fubu or gap etc. We also don't watch TV here. The commercialism & marketing aimed at kids really grosses me out. I just read "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser & "Branded" by Alissa Quart and my convictions are even stronger. Scary stuff.

[Twinsmama]

I won't even wear logoed stuff on myself, and neither will my husband. It just annoys me. My girls are only six months old now, but I'm not going to look at Barbie crap or Disney junk on them. (I say this now...HA!). A minor exception will be made to this no-corporate character rule when it comes to Miffy or maybe even (gasp) Hello Kitty (maybe). The Hello Kitty trip is a real slippery slope, though. We shall see.

Besides the bad political implications of a lot of it, I agree, the stuff is also usually pretty tacky to boot.

[menudo]

Ok, I had lmao at other Hello Kitty mamas. I love it and otherSanrio characters but IMO Sanrio is the worst at overmarketing, just checkout www.sanrio.com and check this out for those who want excitement lol http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...&category=5204

They WILL sell ANYTHING with hello kitty on it!

[LunaMom]

OMG, bebesho2, that Hello Kitty vibrator is just the funniest thing I have seen all week!!!

[Chelly2003]

I find there are so many BIGGER things to worry about or fight over, if my son wants spiderman all over his chest, well thats just fine, so long as its not stupidly priced.
Heck it helps get him dressed and out the door in the morning, I can hardly complain.
I don't want him to feel left out either, as silly as that sounds, I think it would be really sad if he felt rejected because he didn't have some silly t-shirt or other....

[ladylee]

I really, really detest current Disney stuff. If I see it on a rack I will go out of my way to avoid it. DD has no idea what the different characters of Disney are and I feel like I've accomplished something! Now, somewhere along the way she did pick up an affinity for Scooby Doo-and she does own a cute Scooby shirt that a friend gave her for her birthday. And I let her have a Scooby nightlight. She gets so much joy out of these things that I can't impose my beliefs on her.

[anythingelse]

I did just get two new hamtaro shirts, but they were for me There is no clothing lines we are boycotting. I do not like to wear fur though.
Last year one of my sons was asked to leave a Church event when he wore a pokeman shirt. That ticked me off because of the way the moms told him first why instead of me, he was made to feel bad and evil. He was 5 years old. He won't wear logo stuff now much which is totally frustrating since he has two older bros that like it whose grams/aunts buy them the clothes.
Mary
Mom of four

[LukesMum]

I agree that there are bigger things to worry about but this is just part of the "package" of what I'm teaching ds. Again, for us it's the Disney/Nike boycott thing-teaching that the little things we do do infact affect the world we live in. He has a few character things (Sesame Street) but overall we avoid it.

[teachma]

The only character item we have ever purchased for ds was a 3-pack of Bob the Builder underwear from Target a few months ago. It was such a huge treat for him to have a character on his clothing that he began to regularly use the potty almost immediately! He doesn't much ask for character clothing because he rarely sees us shop for clothes- the grandmas supply almost every last article, and I've specified, "No characters."

[tarasam]

Well, I agree with the non-advertising-clothing issue in general. I don't like to pay to display logos on my person. I think that character clothing is a way for large companies to brand themselves early with children. (Also, my personal taste runs to simple clothing!) It's just one method of many, though, and I think that even if you don't do character clothing, your child may still get into it through toys, tv, movies, books that are distributed with characters on them.

Our general family position is to try to avoid character-related stuff. I think the only character toys our 3-year-old son has are a few little Richard Scarry cars/people that I found secondhand. He loves the Busytown books in a big way so that was a concession on my part. But generally, he doesn't watch any TV or videos (unless he is really not feeling well), which cuts out most of the exposure to characters. No commercials, no Disney TV shows, no endless previews on videos, etc.

I'd prefer for him to create his own characters, or fall in love with ones from books that don't show up in mass merchandising campaigns. Those options tend to make his imagination work more than the typical Disney characters do. Right now one of his 'character' favorites is Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus, because he loves the MSB books. He has seen one MSB video and thought it was cool, but I know his love for the Friz comes from the fact that she is such a creative, inspiring person...not from some huge commercial MSB ad campaign.

My point is...I agree, but I don't think you should beat yourself up over the occasional character item. If that was all that your kid knew about and played with, that'd be one thing...but as an occasional thing I don't think it's a big deal.

Tara