Pancakes
There’s this commercial they show right before or right after Sesame Street (yes, a commercial on PBS — I guess all those Tickle Me Elmo dolls aren’t making up the budget). It’s for Pampers and it features a cute little chubby toddler badly in need of a haircut putting a pancake on her head. Did you get that? Putting a pancake on her head. The point of the commercial seems to be about toddlers and creativity (”And today you’re learning about pancakes!”) and the mother, hearing her toddler-girl squeal with joy after placing said pancake on said head, looks indulgently at her daughter before sweeping her up in a big Pampers hug.
Madison loves the pancake girl and of course wanted to be just like her so a few months back she put one of her pancakes on her head only in our house the pancakes come covered in syrup. That was a problem. So now whenever the pancake girl is on I make a point of saying how that pancake girl is going to need a good hair washing and that I hope she likes to have her hair washed because yessiree, that’s what’s going to happen next!
The children are made positively gleeful by my disdain for the pancake girl and now they love the commercial even more but only because they love to scream, “The pancake girl is on!” so that I’ll go into my pancake girl diatribe. (This echoes back to when Noah loved to watch me have a fit whenever Elmo’s World featured babies with tons of bottles and nary a discreet nursing babe in sight.)
What in the heck were the brilliant minds at Pampers thinking? The commercials on PBS pretend not to be commercials (the one for Chuckie Cheese seems to be about the importance of gross motor activities) and the Pampers spot is clearly pretending to be about how it’s perfectly normal and lovely for toddlers to be silly enough to put food on their heads (true that) but who do they think is watching? Who’s the main audience for Sesame? That’s right, kids. And the Sesame audience is skewing younger, which means that many of the children watching are just the age of pancake-girl and already predisposed to putting food on their heads. Why oh why oh why would they show a little girl putting a pancake on her head??? Why not something more benign like, say, a pretzal? Or perhaps, living dangerously, a slice of cheese? My daughter does not need encouragement to take her food off her plate and place it someplace inappropriate.
That’s my rant for the day.
“Why did the children put beans in their ears / When we told children again and again / Not to put beans in their ears. / Why did the children put beans in their ears?”
It’s from some poem or song or something but the attribution escapes me.
Ooh, you know what Sesame Street related thing I rant about? Baby Bear! Why would they have a character with a serious speech impediment on a show that caters to kids still learning to talk?
I am so with you, Dawn. And Clare, I’ve been saying that about Baby Bear for years.
Next thing you know, they’ll have a commercial for Johnson & Johnson where the child is colouring all over the wall
And Mommy is so happy that she scoops up baby into a big sweet embrace. Thank you, baby, for creating a big clean-up for me…
“Why did the kids put beans in their ears? / No one can hear with beans in their ears. / After a while the reason appears. / They did it cause we said no.”
It’s from a song called “Never Say No” from an off-Broadway musical called The Fantasticks. (also the source of the hysterical “Plant a Radish”, about why you should plant gardens rather than having kids because at least you know what you’re going to get.)
Sounds like Dawn is doing it right by discussing the horrors of hairwashing instead of just forbidding food on the head
THANK YOU! I always feel so chastized by pampers when I see that ad like “now, you moms don’t get upset when your children put food on their heads, it’s a learning activity…You want your kid to LEARN, don’t you??? DON’T you???”
Well the little [white] girl in the commercial could have her hair washed every day and it would be fine. I wash my daughter’s hair once every 10 or 14 days and can’t afford to have cashew butter smeared in there on day 3…
“It’s from a song called “Never Say No†from an off-Broadway musical called The Fantasticks”
Oh my God, I have NEVER seen the Fantasticks although I know about it. Ignorance! Auuughgh! Thank you Sarah.
ha. Pancake Girl seems to be a relative of Junie B. Jones, who is the BRATTIEST child who ever lived, whom I totally disdain and my children seemed to worship as a role model. Ergh.
My daughter loved Pancake Girl when she was that age and put her waffles on her head a couple times, looking over at me like, “Get it? Get it? Like that girl! Hey, what’s that goo on my forehead?…” *sigh*
Sing it, sister! I can not beleive how ridiculous commercials are, even the sneaky ones….
Oh how I disdain pancake girl, too. We don’t have pancakes much– er, ever– and it took my kids a looong time to figure out what was going on in that commercial (”She’s got something on her head. They have weird hats on this show, Mom. The girl has to hold her hat on her head.”) And when they clued in that it was FOOD on her head, it didn’t matter what kind of food, they just thought they’d put ANY food on their heads.
Also, for the Junie B. Jones haters of the world? Try “Ruby Lu, Brave and True” instead.
I feel your pain. My kids are drawn like moth to flame whenever pancake girl is on. It is a matter of time before I am washing syrup out of hair.
My 15-month-old son loves pancake girl so much that we started referring to her as his girlfriend. Last night, pancake girl was not on, and my son threw the hugest fit ever. He kept whining and pointing at the TV, even though Sesame Street was long over.
In case anyone is interested, the poem “Why did the children put beans in their ears / When we told children again and again / Not to put beans in their ears. / Why did the children put beans in their ears?” appears as poem # 41 in THE PEOPLE, YES by Carl Sandburg, copyright 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and renewed 1964 by Carl Sandburg, reprinted by permission of the publisher.