FROM THE PUBLISHER

This 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Kline's book is not for parents looking for a quick read on how television influences their children's behavior, and what, if anything, they can do about it. While there is plenty of discussion about the impact of TV on children, this is a serious study written for an academic audience. The author examines the commercial link between television and the toy industry and the impact that connection has on children's culture. Kline argues that by co-opting children's television programing, toy manufacturers have altered the way children are socialized. Children today are much more likely to learn about society by playing with toys, particularly toys that are sold on television, than past generations were. Kline, a professor of communications at Simon Fraser University in Canada, does not criticize businesses for using TV to maximize their profits, but he urges society to acknowledge the large role television and the toy industry play in shaping children's culture and to develop methods to ensure that there is also production of quality materials. (Dec.)

Library Journal

Is our consumer culture enfeebling the imaginations of our children? This is one of the questions posed by Kline (communications, Simon Fraser Univ.). He traces the history of the market for children's cultural goods, books, toys, etc., from its origins in the Industrial Revolution to contemporary times. Most of Kline's book focuses on the form and effect of television marketing of cultural goods directed at children in the last decade. In particular, Kline concentrates on the practice of marketing toys to children via animated cartoon series. The book is thoughtful, well researched, and well written, but, unfortunately, Kline's use of material from many academic disciplines is not always convincing. His psychological analysis of the effects of television marketing on children is interesting but less than compelling. Recommended for political science and media studies collections.-- Edward Buller, ``Natural History,'' American Museum of Natural History