Today’s Get Your Hands Off My Parenting moment comes courtesy of Michele at A Small Victory, who points to this USA Today story:
One day after a record-shattering weekend for Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, an advocacy group is asking Burger King to stop the tie-in of its Kids Meals with the film because it is rated PG-13.
The same group, Dove Foundation, got McDonald’s 13 years ago to apologize for “confusion” from its promotion of PG-13 Batman Returns with Happy Meals. Now, it’s going after BK’s latest Kids Meal promotion — targeted at kids ages 4 to 9. The meals feature characters from Sith or other Star Wars films.
“When Burger King puts that in a Kids Meal, there’s an implicit endorsement of the movie,” says Dick Rolfe, chairman of Dove Foundation.
Okay, reality check time. Revenge of the Sith is the story of the final downfall of a tarnished hero into the Dark Side of the Force, a Jedi becoming a Sith Lord, a group so evil that there are only two in existence at any time in the entire freaking universe. Anakin becomes Darth Vader, evil villain and part of many a nightmare in the 1970s, a character so evil that he makes James Earl Jones scary. Along the way, Anakin/Vader does many evil things. He routinely uses magic strangulation on his minions. His forces blew up an entire planet when Leia wouldn’t give up the location of The Secret Rebel Base. He cut off his own son’s hand in a lightsaber duel. RotS contains no less than a half-dozen similar battles, including one that ends with the hero-villain on fire, so badly burned he needs a really cool helmet and voice sound effect to make it to Episode IV. Knowing all this, most of which was revealed to movie audiences as early as 1977, and knowing that this movie is in fact rated PG-13, you’re going to take your 5 year old to see it just because some minimum wage slave puts a Luke Skywalker toy in the Kids Meal? Who is this so-called Burger King? Successor to Emperor Palpatine? One look into the eyes of the evil Burger King marketer-droid and your abilities to raise your own children are indelibly corrupted by the Dark Side?
These are toys. Kids like toys. Kids ask their parents to take them to BK because they want to have the toys. Parents spend money on the BK Kids Meal instead of the McD Happy Meal because the kids like the cool toys (and adults like me run around buying cheeseburgers because they need all 31 of them). That’s it. BK is endorsing the idea of making money from selling food. They’re not endorsing taking a toddler to see Anakin {SPOILER DELETED} a bunch of {SPOILER DELETED}.
Apparently, BK is not backing down. Good. After all, the Jedi were not eliminated, and we know where the King’s castle is.
Plus, you have to love the monkeys-on-crack marketing team at Burger King who came up with The Sith Sense (and yes, I know it’s just a repurposing of 20Q, only the greatest toy of 2004). You’d think Vader could have guessed that I was thinking of the location of the Secret Rebel Base.
May 25th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
I must rant for a moment — WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE THAT WANT TO RULE THE WORLD AND TELL ME WHICH TOYS ARE APPROPRIATE FOR MY CHILDREN — IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THE TOYS — DO NOT TAKE YOUR KID TO EAT AT BURGER KING — IS IT THAT SIMPLE- OR HAS THE REST OF THE WORLD GONE WACKO? — BURGER KING IS FULL OF FAT AND SALT AND SUGAR ANYWAY — TAKE YOUR KIDS TO THE PARK INSTEAD AND FEED THEM CARROTS AND APPLES AND PLAY FRISBEE! — Thanks
May 26th, 2005 at 8:20 am
One look into the eyes of the evil Burger King marketer-droid and your abilities to raise your own children are indelibly corrupted by the Dark Side?
A Bluegrass Blog
May 30th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
You’d think they’d be more concerned that in order to view the slideshows, the child has to look up the characters’ rear ends
I’m SOOOO glad (heavy on the sarcasm) that there are these groups there to watch out for how people raise their children.