Polish Advertising

I have tried very hard in the last couple of years to prevent Thing 1 from watching live TV. My reason for this is commercials that target kids making them think that they need lots of stuff (food, toys, etc). So, he has an extensive video collection to choose from (even then I have to skip the advertising in the previews). With the toys that are developed nowadays for every movie or cartoon, I figure that it's more than enough advertising for him.

Poland is no different of course. The children's channels run commercials for all kinds of things like candy and toys, etc. The Polish cartoons have toys marketed for them as well. Products sold in stores (cereals, candy, and other junk) usually have characters (Disney, Shrek, Looney Tunes on them).

Looney Tunes characters are on the orange juice and apple juice boxes that I send with Thing 1 to school. Each juice has it's own character, for example Bugs Bunny is on OJ, Daffy Duck is on apple juice,and Taz is on peach flavored juice (weird - I know). The milk boxes have a cute elephant on it (why not a cow - I don't know), but they don't have as much appeal.

Anyway, the other day, the store was out of the Looney Tunes juice boxes that he drinks. He is so picky that he knows which characters he will "drink," so I have no other options. I bought him apple and orange juice boxes that had pictures of the fruit so that he would not suspect that he was getting anything different. He had no problem with the apple juice, but with the OJ, he said that it tasted different. Mind you, both these and the Looney Tunes boxes are made by the same manufacturer. The OJ boxes kept coming back from school unopened. He wanted some OJ one Saturday morning , but not from the juice box. He said he wanted me to pour some out of the bottle that we buy for home.

So I sent him off while I prepared his juice. I decided to see if he could even tell the difference if I poured the juice in the box into a regular cup as if it came from the bottle. Well, he didn't. He took one sip, said it was delicious (yes, he speaks this way) and drank the whole thing. Baffling, but quite interesting finding.