Mint Snuff
Hmm, maybe a bit more edgy of my comics… Anyways, this is a response a commercial I saw running on the Cartoon Network (or one of those channels). See, the commercial was for this Mint Snuff stuff that’s supposed to be like chewing tobacco but mint instead. That’s all fine and good if you’re into that sort of thing, but the snuff is obviously a “candy version” of the tobacco stuff… and if that’s not gross enough, the commercial featured 2 singing beaver puppets… on a kids’ channel… Starting to see my problem here? It’s basically selling a candy tobacco product to kids.
So that’s my issue. I don’t have any problem with people who smoke or drink or do whatever they want… AS ADULTS. For kids, um, no. It’s not selling the effect of the products, it’s selling the behavior of using them. What I mean is this: it’s like selling soda in beer bottles to kids so they can pretend that they’re drinking beer. Now, when the time comes for them to make choices about whether to use the real thing or not, guess what decision they’ll make? That’s why they are no longer allowed to sell tobacco products with cartoon characters geared towards children (remember Camel Cigarettes?). Yeah, worked for a while didn’t it? But this is totally different, yet, the same kind of sleazy marketing tactic. Like I said, it’s selling the behavior… as in, candy cigarettes (which they don’t sell anymore… unless you go to specialty candy shops and they’re usually called something else). It sells the behavior of smoking, so that when the child is confronted to choose between taking a puff or not, his or her decision could be influenced by previous experiences playing with the fake version… thus… that threshold of “this is a bad idea” gets lowered. Hope that all makes sense.
But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be too overly distraught… I mean, we’ve had this kind of junk for a while now; like candy cigarettes & cigars and bubblegum “big league chew” (which fools none of us, it’s so kids can imitate their baseball “heroes” that chew tobacco). Hell, I remember as a child, the other kids would take pixi sticks and make a line of it on the desk, cut off both ends of the paper tube, and sniff it up their noses. At the time, I just thought they were all idiots… but as an adult and writing this, it seems a bit more disturbing. I mean, where the heck did they see that activity to emulate? Maybe TV, don’t think there was much to the FCC back in the day. Anyways, point being… where is the line when it’s too far? I know they got rid of those candy cigarettes, but what of these other forms of tobacco? What stops them from making candy heroin? How bout we lick some candy coated acid stamps too? I know tobacco isn’t an illegal substance, but still, I see very little distinction between marketing the behavior of using a legalized drug to children and marketing the same thing with hard drugs. It’s just trying to wash the poor little impressionable brains of kids. And really, cartoons do enough of that already, we don’t need any more help from the tobacco companies.
Candy cigarettes have been around since I was a kid (the 60′s), never made me start smoking.
yes, but don’t you still eat candy?! dun dun duuuuun!
anyways, very good! you made it out of the social conditioning unscathed! though I wonder if anyone has any statistics on the effects of marketing behavior to children.
I found them fun, didn’t give me any urge either :3
XD
eh, somehow I’d almost rather kids be playing with candy cigarettes than baby bottle pops…
I wouldn’t have prob with even if influencing kids would be the point. If so, they trick people, but I don’t mind until they don’t expressively encourage you to use tobi after you grew up, or before that. Besides, think about it! Who are we to stand against a harmless, make-believe version of a controversial behavior? We’re gamers, what are we doing day after day if not that, I daresay? You don’t exactly play Mount&Blade to pick flowers; you kill people. A lot of ‘em. And Armok help me, for I’ve seen Hell, and it’s called Dwarf Fortress… yet those games have the most polite and understanding communities I’ve seen. So tobacco candy has my kudos.
I’d have to side with Coffin here… first off, youngsters are hardly known for making rational, logical decisions (neither are adults, for that matter… but still) and addictive substances, well, they’re addictive. Gaming can be addictive as well, but a gaming community for Mount & Blade doesn’t go out to actually hunt people down and slaughter them in combat. We don’t have goblins marching up to our door to be massacred. On the other hand, there are communities of drug users who… well, use drugs. And it’s not something that is “kicked” nearly as easily. Chemicals happen to sometimes adversely affect things like judgement, and cause people to get hooked. As adults, lots of people get addicted to prescription drugs, almost on accident sometimes, and that’s even with following the proscribed guidelines. A child is definitely at risk, and using this kind of advertising just sweetens the deal, so to speak.
And yet, it could be worse. I’m an American, (for context of drug use in society) and last year I returned from two years in Ukraine. There, advertising is largely unregulated, and some of the “whisper” campaigns are even more sinister than beaver puppets.
Legally, you can’t sell tobacco to minors. However, there are still “unlicensed” sellers who will hang around schoolyards, and sell products to the kiddies. One particular campaign I caught wind of was targeted towards little girls, and promised that smoking would bring on puberty sooner and stronger. It’s one thing when a 16 year old is trying to buy cigarettes, (though disconcerting a bit) but it’s another entirely when it’s a 10 year old bumming for a light.
Granted, I think that dealing with these advertisements ought to happen at home. I mean, if you’ve got a problem with X or Y, talk about it with your kids, don’t have society do it for you if you disagree with society. I think parents who step up don’t have nearly as much to fear from this sort of chicanery. So, while I’m personally opposed to the idea, and think it’s bad for society, I’m labeling it a symptom of a larger disease, not a root problem itself.
… You ARE aware the candy doesn’t actually have addictives in it either, aren’t you? Just as you don’t really kill people in games or come up with real dwarf torture devices, these are not really drugs. And just as TaleWorlds lacks any ad saying ‘try to kill everyone around you or sell them on the slave market, it’s profitable!’ and Bay12 hasn’t been encouraging massive industrial production of babies for dissection, neither does the ad in question suggest real tobacco is good for you. What you say is happening in Ukraine is terrible and shameful even by liar standards, but not nearly similar to this.
The big problem I have is that we are blaming the manufacturers of these products, not our own choices. It is as if we are saying that the adverts work 100% of the time. That our own choice doesn’t play a part. I feel that if we had to live with the choices we made and couldn’t blame the advertising companies, or the companies that made the products, it would be a very different world. I sincerely believe that if we knew that there wasn’t insurance, or bailouts or anything else that we could fall back on and could only trust our own feelings about things we would make totally different choices.
That being said, outright lies from these companies are bad m’kay! I do feel that when a company or marketing individual chooses to outright lie, their company should be sold off and they should be put out of business, simply because as a person if we outright lied about the safety of something we offered, we would be put in jail, or fined out of business ourselves.
@Fyrebaugh Man, I typed for half an hour until I realized you just expressed your opinion and wasn’t trying to add to the argument.
Zaton is an Idiot, episode 1. T-T
*weren’t.
Zaton is an Idiot, episode 2. (Just let me die in my shame…)
I’m not sure what you’re doing with gaming, Zaton, but I call it “training against the zombie/dragon/alien apocalypse”!!!! XD
but you are right in some since, that just because children play something, it doesn’t mean they will actually do it. I mean, kids are freakin’ insane! they play killing eachother and stuff! but ya know, not many of them grow up to actually do it. problem is… some do… some do…
good points all! but I’d like to echo that ultimately it’s going to fall to the parents to help shape the proper behavior and make their kids aware of the dangers of marketing and junk like peer pressure and stuff. but on the other hand, while parents can regulate what kids watch, read, play, etc. they can’t do it all the time. and the problem I had with the commercial is simply that, it was a quick little commercial that popped up between shows. how can a parent regulate that? this is where, and it pains me to say it, the government comes in. some stuff should be curbed a bit away from directly marketing to the kiddos. I’m all for free speech and all that junk, but when it’s targeted at those who don’t really know much better, who might not have passed the threshold of what is fantasy/reality, then it becomes an attack on the mind and behavior of children. and that I’m not cool with.
like I said, most kids will probably laugh at the puppets, brush it off, play baseball player while eating snuff and spitting, and most will probably just not care. there will be some though that this marketing attack will effect. and while it’s trickled down through many filters to get to that kid, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that it has directly affected him/her.
I know we are and should be held accountable for our own choices, but that’s the issue… kids, by law and definition, make horrible choices. they have no choices legally. so again, up the chain it goes, right to the parent… and whatever parent buys this crud for their kids probably shouldn’t be nominated for parent of the year award. so yeah, kind of a mix of the two (manufacturers and parents) though the scale tips a bit towards the idiots who buy rather than the idiots who sell.
Oh, this will make future snuff users. However we need to know who’s behind the funding to make it to determine whether I think it’s on purpose *to* make future snuff users, or just a fricking idiot with no thought of consequences.
And as far as “Candy cigarettes never made me smoke” I have a feeling we’re all geeks here. The weird directions geeks think in would have a bit of a protective effect against the kind of conditioning that would make future behavior more predictable with more easily led children.
Simple to fix this the parents need to teach their kids not to be easily led. Kids learn from whoever will teach them, if the TV or radio plays a bigger role than the parents in time and attention then who are they going to follow?
yeah… I didn’t go too Nancy Drew on this, so I’m not sure who the contributors are for this ad campaign. but it wouldn’t surprise me in any way if a tobacco company had any ties to it.
Well said Fyre!! it’s a shame I can’t copy that line into a bumper sticker…
I DON’T LIKE THIS! At all! Whoever came up with this kinda stuff is dumb as hell!
/rant off
Excuse the above outburst. I just saw what was said and exploded. Who on earth would want to sell that kind of stuff to kids!? I’ve never seen it, but seriously!
that and it sounds disgusting! I mean, I like mint… I like mint gum… but I couldn’t imagine taking a bite of a big ol handful of mint snuff! ew! XP
I’ve grown mint and other herbs, as well as the garden I normally put in. Mint smells wonderful if it is allowed to enter the lawn, when you mow. Totally different memories of lawn mowing. Mint is not that strong if you simply take the leaves and chew them, not as strong as some of the mint gum that is out there, much less Altoids… Makes you wonder if they are adding other things to the mint to make it addictive. Like they do for tobacco.
that’s an amazingly good idea! letting it grow in your yard so it’s minty fresh when you mow!!!
While the product is stupid, and I don’t want my children to be encouraged to engage in bad and destructive habits, liberty is yet again the answer to this issue. Whoever makes this product has the liberty to advertise it however they wish, and I have the liberty both raise my child and limit what he is exposed to such that the odds of him engaging in said bad and destructive habit are miniscule. Raise your child such that you can trust him to make the right decisions on the big issues, or either you aren’t raising him right or he is rebellious and nothing you do will stop him from screwing himself over anyway.
Many people would say educating my child in my religion is encouraging a “harmful and destructive habit” in my child (those pesky antitheists). I would not want the government to have the power to agree with that opinion and legislate away my parental liberty to bring up my child properly in the faith. Just as such, I cannot support any move to allow the government to have the power to agree with my opinion (that this is a bad and potentially harmful product) and thereby limit the economic liberty of the producer to advertise a product in a way that does not violate anyone’s liberty merely because it is said to encourage bad or destructive habits in children.
Be careful what reasons you wish to be justifiable for government use to remove liberties and what liberties you support giving the government power to violate. Eventually, that reason for the removal of liberty may be turned on you because suddenly, the majority wishes to stop you from doing something as they are of the opinion that reason applies to your action.
sigh… sometimes I hate freedom of speech. don’t get me wrong, I love being able to say what I want, but man, it also means we have to put up with this kind of junk as well.
I guess I’m still on the fence about this… on the one side I’m against this kind of marketing towards the kiddos, but on the other it means impeding on liberties… erg!
No thanks to giving Corporations the status of people. What needs to be done is not treat corporations as people since you can’t lock em up or put them down like rabid dogs when they run amok killing people.
Really though, free speech applies to individuals and allows everyone to make an ass of themselves whenever they want or put forth controversial ideas that go against the status quo. This should never ever apply to corporations, what with false advertising, doctoring of products …. heck, I can’t drink OJ in most places due to the arm long list of ingredients that may make me ill or possibly kill me that they put into it just to cut costs of production or make crap seem palatable and still be called OJ.
Long story short - Liberties are for PEOPLE and not for commercial or collective entities else repressive regimes should enjoy the same freedoms under US law.
Corporations are made up of the assets of people. The liberties of the people who own those assets that are the corporation extend to the corporation itself as the corporation is merely an extension of those people. To restrict the activities of a corporation more than you would that of a person, if to violate the liberties of those people that make up the corporation.
is to violate*
Well I’m sincerely confused. Because the commercial says to stop chewing tobacco and try this stuff. But the only kids ( i know it gets younger and younger as time goes) that usually try it are old enough to think this commercial is stupid. My only guess is its not a commercial geared towards kids. As adults chew tobacco and its an alternative geared to the people who are in the habit of chewing, but dont want to be gross (cus seriously, ew). And since it advertised candy (stuff) and had puppets it was ok to show on a cartoon channel.
However, though i dont think anything like this could subliminally brainwash kids, part of making something bad seem “ok”, thus getting kids to do it, is making it a norm. Kids are impressionable and whether they rebel or not they take the world for what it is. I dont want to deflect this conversation, but Its just the best example i can think of right now. Some parents avoid talking about gay people, and socializing with em. When the topic is mentioned then they shy away from it. They dont openly state their problem and they might say its ok. But the kids always see their hesitation. The fact that their parents are uncomfortable with it. Ergo the kids realize that Gay people are wrong, something gross, or something to be avoided. Que Gay Bullying in school being a big problem because though your average conservative parent isn’t openly anti-gay, the kids instinctively figure out that that is the situation.
So the (admittedly small) risk is the resurrection of these habits as fun or socially acceptable. I dont know, someone better could give a more accurate analysis of what could happen. My point is it is not brainwashing of stupid children that could cause problems, but the notion that its common or fun to do these things that Kids would by themselves think is disgusting , and thus try and even commit to it when they otherwise wouldnt. Back to the “its cool” thing, even if they dont use that phrasing. Because from what i understand its the social aspect of forcing oneself to perform the habit for one social reason or another that causes someone to use the product long enough to get addicted.
idk… the subliminal advertising of the 80s is what caused me to have quite the gi joe collection. >)