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early as two decades ago, the
Journal of the American Medical Association
found that “nearly all of America’s six-year-olds could identify Joe Camel, who was just as familiar to them as Mickey Mouse.” My guess is that today, kids as young as three or four can not only recognize Joe Camel but associate him with the brand. 9
    The main reason that eighteen-month-old babies can recognize brands like McDonald’s and Camel is that in today’s media-saturated culture, younger and younger children are being exposed to more media and advertising than ever before. By the age of three months, 40 percent of all infants are watching screen media regularly, 10 and by the time these same children are two, the number rises to 90 percent. And let’s not forget the advertising these toddlers are now being bombarded with on the Internet, cell phones, video games, and billboards.
    And all this makes a more powerful impression than you’d think. By the age of six months, babies are able to form “mental images” of corporate logos and mascots. 11 Which is no surprise given that these days, everything from bibs to strollers is adorned withlicensed characters from Elmo to SpongeBob to Tigger to Buzz Lightyear—the very same iconic figures that will continue selling these kids food, toys, and more throughout their childhoods. According to Dr. Allen Kanner, a renowned child psychologist at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, “Recent studies have shown that by the time they are 36 months old, American children recognize an average of 100 brand logos.” 12 In one 2007 experiment, when children aged three to five were shown a dozen flash cards with assorted corporate logos on each, most of the children screamed “Target!” with delight when they spotted the store’s signature red bull’s-eye.
    Scarier still, babies are able to actually request brands by name as soon as they can speak. In one notable study, a twenty-three-month-old was heard to repeat the mantra “Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it,” while asecond twenty-three-month-old gestured to the bottle of beer his father was gripping, murmuring, “Diet Pepsi, one less calorie.” 13 By the first grade, an average child can recite roughly two hundred brand names—a figure that makes sense, seeing as most children receive an average of seventy new toys and gadgets a year. By age ten, a Nickelodeon study found, the average child has committed anywhere between three hundred and four hundred brands to memory.
    It’s not just that these young kids are simply learning the names of brands, either.
They are actually beginning to form preferences for them.
According to a study published in a 2010 issue of
Pediatrics
, when forty preschoolers were given a choice between two versions of a particular food (in this case, graham crackers, fruit snacks, and carrots), the only difference being that one package had a licensed character on it and the other didn’t, they not only chose the branded version, they actually reported that the food with the character
tasted
better, reports study author Christina Roberto, a doctoral student at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. 14 In another study, sixty-three preschoolers were asked to taste pairs of five completely identical foods: hamburgers, chicken nuggets, French fries, milk, and carrots. The first set was wrapped in plain old logo-free packaging. The second pair was packaged in a McDonald’s wrapper. By a long shot, the children rated the tastes of the foods and drinks higher if they believed they were from McDonald’s. This even went for the carrots 15 (and the last time I looked, McDonald’s doesn’t even sell carrots).
    As Douglas Rushkoff writes in his book
Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say
, “By seeding their products and images early, [the] marketers can do more than just develop brand recognition; they can literally cultivate a demographic’s sensibilities as they are formed. A