205 Drop: Top 11 Questions After Watching The NBA Playoffs This Weekend

Today's drop over at Editor Scrap's House Of Tits (admittedly, a less useful URL than what he uses) contains at least 30% new material from the omnibus NBA posts you've scrolled over this week, and it's short, so by all means, go and click. But I'm going to poach the #1 question here for a little more grist for the bloghole. (Oh, and longtime site readers know there's an extra Easter egg moment in the names of the photos. Today's is very nice for people who have suffered through enough Philadelphia media, and amuses me like no end when it creates site traffic for searches like Pervert Howard Eskin. But I digress.)

1) Why does Burger King want to sell kids' meals with cardboard asses?

There are, of course, reasons for this. Brand marketers want to do anything that gets them free impressions, of which both this post and the 205 drop are guilty, guilty, guilty. Whenever you can get people scolding you in public, that's almost always a plus in the long run, as it gets more young eyes thinking cool things about you. And finally and most regrettably, what they are doing with this campaign is perfectly in the wheelhouse of something that's made money in this country for my whole damn life: making us all think and buy (buy, buy, buy) like we're teenagers.

What is grafting sex on top of Spongebob, really, but a mocking teenage-style graffiti, maybe in a notebook or a school desk? What is adding tits and ass where they don't belong, but a nodding snigger to the back of the room?

I've got daughters, nine and three, and the speed in which people want my kids to grow up is astonishing, of course... but only to a certain point. If you get them to think about things to the point where they see the flim-flam show going on (and that's not a constant thing, but hopefully she's a little more aware of the con game than most), I think you're doing your job as a parent... rather than, say, keeping them totally isolated from this nonsense.

But there is, finally, this. I don't want my kids to see the ads that come on during my games (not that I really want to watch them either, but that's another matter). So on a very easy level, I don't really want my kids to watch games with me. So they don't. Despite liking Spongebob, and Burger King, and having parents that are not perfect when it comes to nutritional choices, and having a franchise within a mile of the house with a big damn Spongebob on the top of it that my youngest waves at when we drive by...

Well, we drive by. Nice brand marketing job there, asshats.