INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY
Contact: Leigh A. Poirier or
Janet Hetherington
613-228-3155

STUDY BY THE CANADIAN TOY TESTING COUNCIL
CONFIRMS INFLUENCE OF TOY ADVERTISING ON CHILDREN

OTTAWA - November 14, 2001 - It's something parents have always suspected, but now it's been confirmed: toy advertising to children, especially TV commercials, has a direct influence on child viewers and can create a desire for "hot" toys. In addition, children aged 4-6 years may be unable to make a clear distinction between television programs and ads selling toys to them.

The Canadian Toy Testing Council (CTTC), the leading authority on toys in Canada, completed a comprehensive study of toy advertising to children through various media, and has released the results in a document called "I Want That!: The impact of current trends and practices shaping the advertising of toys to children in the global marketplace." This special Media Study Project was undertaken with the support of Industry Canada.

"The Canadian Toy Testing Council undertook this study because we were receiving concerned calls from parents, professionals and other Canadian consumers," said Leigh Poirier, CTTC Executive Director. "In recent years, marketing and advertising strategies to promote such toys as Tickle Me Elmo, and more recently, Pokemon, tended to create an unrealistic consumer demand. In some cases, during the 'mad dash' for the 'have-to-have' toy, consumers were actually physically injured. Numerous consumer and media inquiries about these much sought-after toys created a consumer frenzy, with some people wanting them without even really knowing what they are," she said.

Prompted by concerned calls, the Canadian Toy Testing Council decided to examine how well advertisers are following advertising and broadcasting codes when advertising toys to children. While the majority of the CTTC study focused on television advertising, the study also touched upon print advertising and Internet advertising. The complete results of this study are available via the Internet at www.toy-testing.org.

According to Statistics Canada, Canadian kids watch, on average, 16.8 hours of television a week (Variety magazine, January 3, 1999). In 1998, 51 toy lines connected to TV shows were launched worldwide, contributing to the $22 billion toy licensing business (A.C. Nielsen Media Research and the Toronto Star; March 17, 1999).

For the Media Monitoring segment of the CTTC study, 19 of the Council's specially trained volunteer families viewed over 70 television commercials advertising toys during the pre- and post-Christmas buying season (November 2000-February 2001), to see if the commercials conformed with The Broadcast Code for Advertising to Children (1993).

Under the Code, "Children's advertising" refers to paid commercial messages directed to persons under 12 years of age. The code contains 30 guidelines. Key commitments include:

• No subliminal messages, i.e. messages below the threshold of normal awareness.
• No exaggeration of product characteristics such as performance, speed, size, etc.
• Results from a drawing, construction, craft or modelling toy or kit should be attainable by an average child.
• No advertising or child-oriented promotion of products not intended for use by children, e.g. drugs, medicines in pharmaceutical form, etc.
• No advertising which directly urges children to buy or ask their parents to buy a product or service.
• A ban on the use of puppets, persons and characters (including cartoon characters) well-known to children, to endorse or promote products, premiums or services.
• Prices must be clear and complete. If accessories seeming to be part of the purchase are available only at extra cost, this must be clearly said and shown. If toys shown together are sold separately, this must be made clear.
• No advertising, except specific safety messages, can portray adults or children in clearly unsafe acts or situations (e.g. using flames or fire, or tossing food into the air and attempting to catch it in the mouth, etc.).
• Advertising cannot imply that owning or using a product makes the owner superior or that without it the child will be open to ridicule or contempt, except in references to educational or health benefits.
  
  Advertising to children in Quebec is prohibited by the Quebec Consumer Protection Act.

Participants in the study were encouraged to comment on the commercials and how their children reacted to them. Observations included:

• I found a lot of the "male" oriented toys were almost always violent in some manner or another. It seemed that the world needed to be saved and there were bad guys that needed to be conquered. The boys on the commercial were shown shooting at the enemy or hitting someone or wrestling. I did not see the same type of behaviour on any of the "girl" toys. That is another point, there seemed to be a large gender barrier between many of the toys, a clear idea of boy toys and girl toys. When it came to commercials for cereals, they were not gender biased.
  
  
• I found that in the 6 a.m.- 9 a.m. schedule, 90 percent of the commercials repeated themselves every hour. If you had six commercials in one hour, at least five of the same products would be repeated in the next hour. These commercials would also repeat themselves in almost the same manner during the week..
  
  
• Many stations show the same commercial close together, but in different half-hour blocks (e.g., 7:28 and 7:35). I guess they can get around the rules this way, but kids still see the same commercial over and over again, close together.
  
  
• All the commercials seemed to be aimed at kids!
  
  
• Most of the commercials had website addresses written at the end of the commercial. (Parents noted that many of the children viewing the commercials could not read, and that many of the commercials did not tell children to ask permission to visit the website.)
  

The CTTC study found a number of traditional games were advertised in addition to the video and computer games, and electronic toys. One manufacturer in particular strongly promoted the notion of "family game night", where Mom, Dad and the kids can all be together and play board games, perhaps in an attempt to wrestle children away from the computer screen.

The TV commercials attempted to make playing these games exciting, especially games for younger kids. That excitement could be exaggerated at times, when it came to portraying game play. Viewers also felt several computer game commercials viewed tended to exaggerate the toy's capabilities. The use of animation - sophisticated computer animation in particular - made it very easy for the ads to make the characters look larger than will appear on the actual computer screen.

The Focus Group segment of the CTTC study, conducted by Vision Research, explored the ability of children of different ages to identify, comprehend and evaluate advertising for toys and games.
Three groups of six to nine children were held during the winter of 2000 and spring of 2001. Participants were grouped by age to avoid opinion-leading by older children. Key findings of the focus group sessions follow:

• According to the children in these three focus groups, television was their most important source of information about toys and games. The influence of television diminished in older children who were more likely to be sceptical about advertising and to be influenced by their peer group as well as television advertising.
  
  
• While the participants had difficulty recalling any advertisements for toys or games, when shown a reel of recently-aired toy and game commercials, most had seen the ads previously.
  
  
• The intent of television commercials - to convince and sell - was evident to the 10-12 year olds but totally transparent to the 4-6 year olds. The youngest children did not appear to make a clear distinction between the program and the commercials in a broadcast, even though they understood the content of the programs and the ads.
  
  
• While the 4-6 year olds were very open to influence by television advertising for toys, this was less true for the two older age groups. Among the 7-9 year olds there was more awareness of the sales intent of advertising, but still developing tastes and brand loyalties.
  
  
• The use of older children in commercials than would normally play with a certain toy gave a commercial the air of an "endorsement" by older, and presumably "cooler" children.
  
  
• Several examples of commercials were presented which bordered on factual misrepresentation. Where these commercials involved the functioning of a toy even the oldest children were unable to evaluate the likelihood that a toy would function as shown.
  
  
• Commercials demonstrating inappropriate social behaviour were shown, but prompted little reaction. The younger children with still-strong views of right and wrong were more likely than the older ones to criticize a commercial because the subject was "acting wild" or using a toy to steal from others.
  
  
• When the older children were given the task of creating their own television commercials, their lack of appraisal skills was demonstrated. Although they were very familiar with many commercials, and could understand and "play back" the communication elements of commercials, they were not able to abstract from the ads or see the techniques of persuasion being used.
  
  
• Among the older children there was some awareness that important information might be communicated in the "fine print" at the end of the commercial. The most commonly recalled caveat was "Batteries not included," many other important conditional statements were not understood by the children due to delivery that was too fast, print that was too small and too difficult for children, and use of intonation that masked the true meaning of the message.
  
  
• These three focus groups with a range of children confirmed several hypotheses about the influence of advertising on children. First, that pre-schoolers and those in the early grades are impressionable and can be heavily impacted by television advertising. Second, that "consumer caution" messages are largely ineffective in communicating to the target audience of children. And finally, that although children become aware of the underlying sales motivation of television ads as they grow older, many are not aware of how they might be misled.

The Canadian Toy Testing Council, a non-profit organization that tests toys and provides the results to Canadian families, is celebrating its 50^th anniversary in 2002. The Council tests and rates toys for durability, safety, design, function, ease of assembly, battery consumption and overall play value.

Toy experts will be available for interviews by telephone to discuss the results of this study.