Out of the Garden: Toys and Children's Culture in the Age of TV MarketingThis timely and innovative book provides a detailed history of marketing to children, revealing the strategies that shape the design of toys and have a powerful impact on the way children play. Stephen Kline looks at the history and development of children's play culture and toys from the teddy bear and Lego to the Barbie doll, Care Bears and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He profiles the rise of children's mass media - books, comics, film and television - and that of the specially stores such as Toys 'R' Us, revealing how the opportunity to reach large audiences of children through television was a pivotal point in developing new approaches to advertising. Contemporary youngsters, he shows, are catapulted into a fantastic and chaotic time-space continuum of action toys thanks to the merchandisers' interest in animated television. Kline looks at the imagery and appeal of the toy commercials and at how they provide a host of stereotyped figures around which children can organize their imaginative experience. He shows how the deregulation of advertising in the United States in the 1980s has led directly to the development of the new marketing strategies which use television series to saturate the market with promotional "character toys". Finally, in a powerful re-examination of the debates about the cultural effects of television, Out of the Garden asks whether we should allow our children's play culture to be primarily defined and created by marketing strategies, pointing to the unintended consequences of a situation in which images of real children have all but been eliminated from narratives about the young. |
Contents
Communication Analysis for the Age of Marketing | 22 |
The Making of Childrens Culture | 44 |
The Origins of Childrens Fiction | 77 |
The Rise of Mass Media for Children | 107 |
Marketing Toys to Children and Youth | 143 |
Building Character | 174 |
Limited Imaginings | 208 |
Other editions - View all
Out of the Garden: Toys and Children's Culture in the Age of TV Marketing Stephen Kline No preview available - 1995 |
Out of the Garden: Toys and Children's Culture in the Age of TV Marketing Stephen Kline No preview available - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
action activities adults animation attitudes audience Barbie became behaviour boys Broadcasting Care Bears cartoon cent Chain Store Age character toys character-marketing child childhood childrearing children's advertising children's books children's culture children's marketing children's play children's television Children's Toy Cognitive comic commercial consumer consumption contemporary critics Disney dolls drama educational emotional entertainment experience fantasy fiction film Fisher-Price G.I. Joe gender girls Hanna-Barbera Hasbro He-Man helped heroes Hordak imaginary imagination impact important influence Inhumanoids interaction interest Journal of Communication kids learning licensing Little Pony marketplace Mattel merchandising modern moral narrative networks parents patterns peer play value plush popular preferences preschool Press programmes promotional role scenes Sesame Street She-Ra shows Skeletor Smurfs social stories superhero symbolic Television Advertising television's themes Thundercats tion toy industry toy makers toy market Transformers understand Wartella watch Wuzzles York young