Most young children are aware when advertisements are being shown on television. Advertising encourages children to lose intere

Interviewer:  Today we’re talking about the advertising of toys. With me I have Anna Thompson, a member of an environmental group and mother of three, David Wheeler, father of two and manager of a marketing company, and Jim East here is an Advertising Standards Officer who makes the rules about television advertising in Britain. Anna, first, your group has been asking people to stop and think before they go out and buy more toys.
Anna:  Yes, parents are under more and more pressure to buy the latest toy for their child and we feel that television advertising is at fault. A lot of it is targeted at children of maybe five or six. There’s evidence that these children don’t distinguish between the advertisements and the programmes so they enjoy the pictures and the stores and then of course they want the product.
Interviewer:   Do you think though that today’s children are any different from children ten, twenty, even thirty years ago?
Anna:  If you look at the kind of top toys, you’ll find that 20, 30 years ago the same toys would run over two, three or four years and now you’ll find that there are lots Of new ones each year. We’re talking about the way new things are pushed at kids, every five minutes practically.
David:  Can I just come in there and say that advertising on British television by toy manufacturers to kids is actually decreasing and it has been for the last six years.
Anna:   But spending on advertising has increased -- the advertisements which do appear are much more sophisticated and have had more money spent on them.
David:  But for a toy manufacturer to keep its share of the market, it has to do just that. Traditional toys are having a hard time now from all the other things aimed at kids -- competition from videos, computer games and the rest. What used to be spent on toys now has to be shared with all these newer and probably more exciting products.
Interviewer:  Jim, what are the rules governing the advertising of toys to children in Britain?
Jim:  OK, very briefly, advertisers are not allowed to say, "go and ask your parents for this product". What they show in terms of the product itself has to reflect what the product can actually do, It mustn’t do magical things on television that it can’t do in real life.
Interviewer:  I’m a mother of four small children myself and what I wonder when I watch the advertisements is how they can show something which I know is tiny and plastic but it’s shot in such a way -- the camera work and the lighting and stuff—that it looks very attractive. Are they allowed, those sorts of advertisements?
Jim:  Well, in toy advertisements, unlike for other products, advertisers are obliged to show some kind of familiar item that kids will recognise and put it next to the toy so that you can tell how big it really is. Advertisers can, though, show their products in the best light as long as it’s not actually misleading.
Interviewer:  How about if toy advertisements weren’t allowed until after 8 pm, when most children are in bed. What difference would that make? David?
David:  Well, very little, I’d say. For a start 8 pm isn’t significant: a quarter of all children’s viewing takes place after that time, even some of the young children, four to sevens, are watching then. But, really why shouldn’t the kids see the adverts?
Anna:  Because advertising is teaching kids that they can use something a few times and then throw it away. It doesn’t do them any good and it certainly doesn’t do the planet any good.
Jim:  I have to say that we deal with all the complaints about toy advertising on television and we get a handful each year. The research we’ve done indicates that the majority of people find toy advertising acceptable.
Interviewer:  Well, we have to leave it there, so thank you.