I'd guess almost half of my childhood desires were based around Saturday morning commercials. Until I was about ten, I only watched commercial television on weekends, the rest of the time it was PBS. But I watched Saturday morning cartoons and cable at my grandparent's on Sunday (the only chance I had to watch Nickelodeon).
Well, I take that back, I watched television in the evenings with my parents, but those commercials weren't usually anything I was interested in, cars and jewelry and clothes and adult stuff, at least not until about late November when the Christmas commercials started came out again. Then coffee commercials and cookie commercials and beer, pop and cigarette commercials held my interest. I had little desire to have any of the products based on the commercials (especially beer and cigarette commercials, which vaguely scared me as I knew they were advertisements for things kids shouldn't have), but I loved the commercials for being tiny miniature stories, like shows in their own right.
But Saturday morning cartoons were for Cheerios and Cookie Crisp, Sugar Smacks and Pops, Teddy Grahams, Pop Secret Popcorn, Tootsie Pops, McDonalds, Show Biz Pizza, Double Mint gum, Juicy Fruit gum, Bubble Yum gum, Starbursts, 7 Up, M&Ms, Fruit Roll Ups, My Buddy and Kid Sister, Pound Puppies, LEGO, Barbies, Hot Wheels, Slip N Slides, Skip Its, Play Doh, Fashion Plates, Fairy Winkles, Popples, GI Joe, Baby Alive, Crest toothpaste, Flintstones vitamins, and such public service announcements as This Is Your Brain on Drugs, The More You Know, and Louie the Lightning Bug.
I could go on, those are just a few of the more memorable ones. Get me in conversation with a boy, and we could probably come up with a lot more. There were a lot of commercials over the years, many of them now considered classics by my age group, with jingles and catch phrases I can still repeat. Commercials that nestled into my heart and get me all nostalgic now because they remind me of being three or five, or seven, or whatever.
They also instilled me with desire for the things they portrayed. Not all the time, but it happened. I remember the GI Joe commercials, but I never had any interest in them, same goes for Popples, Pound Puppies, My Buddy, and a lot of the food products. Love of the commercial did not immediately translate to love of the product. But every now and again, I would see a product on TV that I. Had. To. Have.
For all the things I got, there was a lot that I didn't get, of course. In most cases my parents could tell which things I was asking for because the commercial had hypnotised me and which things might actually be worth getting for me. My parents always took us shopping with them, and made sure we could actually see the toys we saw in advertisements. They would sit down with my brother or I and ask us about some of the more commercial driven stuff we wanted. If we had a justification for really wanting something, they'd usually get it for us. They also regularly gave us things we didn't necessarily ask for, but were glad to get anyway, books and board games and stranger toys that my parents thought were cool.
When I was six years old, my parents gave me a Sony Walkman for Christmas, a product I considered myself way too young to own. I had a Teddy Ruxpin, and borrowed my mom's cassette player to listen to my books on tape, but the idea of having my very own player, with headphones, blew my mind. Today, I think the reason was mostly that I was singing Disney songs around the house at all hours and my father was just as happy if I did that up in my room where he didn't have to listen to it. The Walkman came with the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid.
But, there were a few lessons to be learned from wanton desire of something based only from seeing it on television.
When I was about four years old, I desperately wanted the game advertised as coming on the back of a box of Alpha-Bits. We were a Cheerios or Rice Krispies family. My parents agreed to buy it, but I had to agree to eat all the cereal before I got the game. My parents were probably just happy that I, a picky eater, was opting to eat something new of my own accord. Requests for food were usually honoured, just because my brother and I were picky kids, if we were willing to try something just because it was on TV, fine, but we did have to agree to eat all of it.
It's probably too bad that they don't advertise things like kiwi fruit or pomegranates or weird and new fruits and vegetables, because that would probably work. Although we were wise to the Popeye spinach ploy, because spinach was a known disgusting food, it could have worked with otherwise unknown but good for you foods. I know my brother used to get really excited about toothpaste and cold medication commercials.
Anyway, back to the Alpha-Bits. Agreement made and only one box of cereal between me and that wonderful game, my task was clear and my determination was strong.
Let me tell you now that Alpha-Bits are disgusting. They're a bit like eating frosted cardboard. However, I doggedly ate my way through the box. Finally, finally, the box was empty and Dad cut everything off the back box panel. He and I played that cheap rip off of a game immediately after breakfast, and Dad won. I think I may have cried, and I think we played it again and I won, but the game was never played again. It's still sitting in a drawer in the dining room in my parent's house. I could get it out and play it if I wanted, but to this day, I still don't want to. It wasn't worth what I'd gone through to get it. All that horrible cereal just to be beaten by my father at a really uninspired game. This was deeply unfair.
Another thing I can remember wanting with a firey passion was a Baby Shivers. It was a doll that was supposed to shiver when it got cold, cover her up and she'd be warm again. I thought that was the coolest idea ever- a doll that did something without making a mess. My mother always joked about when she had one of those dolls that went to the bathroom. She was only allowed to play with it in the sink as there was practically no time between food going in the doll, and food coming out of the doll, so I knew better than to ask for one of those. But with Baby Shivers I saw the opportunity to have a doll that did something that didn't make a mess.
I saw one in a toy store and picked it up. It had a vibrating mechanism built into it, and it scared the crap out of me. I saw Mom see me, and try not to laugh at me. So, I tried to play it cool. I didn't want to admit that I now really didn't want the stupid thing after I had begged and begged and made a complete fool out of myself over wanting it without ever seeing it in real life.
Today, I am a slow purchaser. I don't tend to go in for impulse buys. I prefer searching the Internet for reviews, opinions and seeing exactly what I'm getting before I get it. I rent games and movies, I check books out of the library. If I'm buying from Amazon, I always read the reviews, and generally Google "product name sucks" or "don't buy product name" just to see what the haters think. I check country of origin tags and ingredient labels. I'm much more interested in hearing the opinions of people I know or at least trust.
In fact, I've read that as a generation, my target age group is less effected by advertising. We are the targets of viral marketing, of strange and quirky commercials that get us interested in finding out more. We don't watch a lot of television, as a group. We play games and go online to watch TV shows with limited commercial interruption. Our parents had die-hard brand loyalty, but we use PCs and own iPods, put our PSP next to the Wii and reminisce about playing Sonic the Hedgehog. I'd say it's about quality of experience rather than coolness or popularity. Not this jacket is the jacket everyone's buying, but "Why is everyone buying that jacket? What does it offer them that it might offer me? Do I need what it has to offer?" Once we've made that decision, we'll defend it.
I think that's why the PSP/Wii/X-Box thing is such a debate. The people who like the kind of games Sony offers buy PSPs, or X-Boxes because they're almost the same, but cheaper. People who like what Nintendo offers are usually not the sort of people who care about first person shooters and war games, so they buy a Wii. I'll defend my choice to buy a Wii to anyone, but I'll admit that the Wii is not for everyone.
For a generation of kids so universally influenced by television, I don't think anyone would have projected we'd turn out like that.
But, I never got a pogo stick. I would have killed myself, or ridden it once and never again, I know that now. To this day, even fully aware that I would still kill myself if I got a pogo stick, I still find myself wishing I had one.