I mean I get it...I see the whole push toward every video game being exercise related, I see the rise of Whole Foods and "healthy organic living"(ie: rich suburbanite lifestyles), and eco/environmental green friendly stuff. But man, why does everything magical that we grew up with in the 80's and 90's have to be destroyed? If I had a kid, sure I wouldn't allow much junk food and only occasional fast food. But the joy of getting a kids meal for kids never goes away, and heck even I at 33 get excited when I happen upon a cool fast food toy line(like the Monsters vs Aliens line at McD)
I remember there was a burger King Line of Lord of the Rings toys that came out with the first movie and it was like a bragging point amongst fans who was able to collect more. I think it would be awesome of the muppets to see a fast food toy line. WE could start a thread "Which One Did you Get Today?" As for the whole fast food thing I kinda feel like if you don't want the fast food don't eat it and leave those of us who do alone.
There's such an annoying intricacy about this. It's not so much just a movement of hypocritical poser environmentalists and their holier than thou-ness, but mostly from parental groups who feel the need to ban everything so they don't have to say "no" to their precious spoiled brats. Sure, they have one or two hack pediatricians and child psychologists on their staff to try to bring studies and statistics to their selfish goals. These are the very same people who made sure cartoons were inoffensive and bland and unrelatable. They just want everyone else to raise their kids except them. Not to mention the people who think they're doing a good thing who never feed their kids anything but high end food because they can afford it.
Now, I've said this hundreds of thousands of millions of times, you can ALWAYS buy the toy without the food. I think to solve the blame game, they need to put up on the menu that they indeed sell these things alone.
But above all, it's not even just the banning... it's the letter writing and bad press. It's one thing to pull the toys out of kids hands to help solve a complex issue the media oversimplifies (because if there's no outrage over something, there's outrage that there isn't outrage), but they also want to villify any company that refuses to comply to, again, one size fits all, bandaid solutions. So basically, if Disney were to put a Phineas and Ferb figure in with those fries, they'd whine and moan and toss a big stink. So now, companies are actually too afraid NOT to comply due to threats of bad press. So the toy licences are changing as well to become educational toys and junk like that... because now you can argue, "HEY! We care! We have crayons you can easily buy at Target for 50 cents."
I just want ONE company to draw the line and say, "look! We WANT to make money and put cartoon characters on candy and givaways." it's the only merchandise some shows ever get (I cherish my SuperCow from Taco Bell). But just to say, if you don't want your kids eating junk food, DON'T buy them junk food. Spend the extra 20 bucks and get a babysitter when you go grocery shopping. I've seen a lot of interviews with these stick in the mud parental groups and that's their only concern... Not having to say no and deal with their brat kids.
And of course this trickles down to kids programming being unprofitable... and they ARE looking at getting rid of commercials for over the fast food counter toys as well... I don't wanna spend 8 more months complaining about them right here.