Ads aimed at kids? Oh my!

If Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, had been around back in the 1930s, Ovaltine would have been in considerable hot water over its dastardly "Little Orphan Annie shake-up mug." Chances are earlier generations would have heard little or nothing about Tom Mix eating Hot Ralston in the morning, let alone some cartoon cuckoo bird going "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."

Using confidential financial data that it required the companies to turn over, the Federal Trade Commission in a new report estimates the nation's largest food and beverage companies spent about $1.6 billion in 2006 marketing their products -- especially carbonated drinks -- to children.

About a third of that amount was dedicated to promoting the carbonated drinks.

"This study confirms what I have been saying for years," intoned Sen. Harkin, who asked for the study. "Industry needs to step up to the plate and use their innovation and creativity to market healthy foods to our kids. That $1.6 billion could be used to attract our kids to healthy snacks, tasty cereals, fruits and vegetables."

Not.

It doesn't make much sense to spend money promoting a product unless you can differentiate it in the public's mind from competing products -- those advertising outlays, by definition, have to generate more new revenue than they cost.

For a major food distributor to promote its own brand of fresh peaches or broccoli, it would have to argue its brand of broccoli was sufficiently superior to justify a far higher price -- enough higher to cover millions in ad costs -- at which point Sen. Harkin would likely be the first to shout, "Fraud!"

Some advertising may be goofy, but there'd be little incentive to improve products if the purveyors faced heavy-handed government restrictions on their ability to advertise and promote the resulting distinctions.

"Studies" like this latest no-brainer from the FTC advance a thinly disguised agenda for Congress to seize control over advertising "targeted at children," which would stick the nose of an enormous camel under the tent.

If regulating advertising is good for kids, after all, why not for adults? And what advertising doesn't impact kids, in some way?

Kids are more obese these days not because of Coke and Pepsi, which were readily available 60 years ago. They're obese because they're not getting out for any exercise.

Nor do kids buy most of these products. They're bought by parents, who are free to say "No" ... and turn off the TV, for that matter, if they find the contest unequal.

At which point the kids might have to -- oh, the humanity -- go outside.