late to the party.

I was forbidden Barbies and all that good stuff. The only good thing about the way my uber lefty parents raised me is that my brother was able to get CO status for the Vietman war because of thier anti war toy position.

Here's how I handled stuff with my boys. Yes, boys but there are still issues. I explained in terms they could understand WHY we didn't do certain things or allow certain toys at our house.

Example: we didn't buy/permit much Disney stuff. The reasons we ( both of us as parents ) gave 1. Disney repackaged someone else's stories - you explain this correctly and you can have great library adventures finding Milne, Hans Christen Anderson etc and 2. guys sitting around trying to figure out how many products they can market to parents and or kids. Kids GET this stuff.

Same thing with cartoon advertising and toys. If you explain it in kid terms, they easily grasp the concept that someone is just trying to make a buck off of cartoon tagged toothbrushes, underpants and other stuff. But you have to start early.

We did the math on Happy Meals, just how much you were paying for that crappy little toy.

My boy's hearts were broken when Lego sold out and started branding thier blocks with Pizza Hut and a few other things.

I think it's important to encourage imagination through dressups and fantasy play.. so instead of forbidding princess play, if I had daughters I'd find ways to make it creative and imaginative, and not just be reenactment of the latest Disney cartoon. I would spend a lot of time explaining WHY, in terms they could grasp, certain roles might be positive or negative, instead of just not allowing it. And then present the kind of imagination fodder that would be acceptable.

It's eerie now that my boys are pretty much grown, to see how the indoctrination I did about Disney TV cartoon toys and marketing has stayed with them into adult hood, and manifested into some fairly cool social responsibility.