Here in Quebec province (Canada), publicity aimed at kids is illegal..

[SheepEater]

... and I only fully realized this relatively recently.

That means essentially, toy commercials of any kind are illegal here.

This must be a pretty old law because I remember NEVER seeing any toy commercial in the 80s on french speaking channels when I was a kid. This pissed me and my brother off. We would watch saturday morning cartoons on english-speaking networks sometimes just to get to watch the toy commercials!

Are there any other countries/states/provinces where this is the case?

(Reference:)

http://www.opc.gouv....Application.pdf

If you ask me, I think this law is stupid. Paranoid censorship at its best.

Edited July 21, 2013 by SheepEater

[dr_spock]

There are exceptions in that law like ads in children magazine or publicity for a children show.

As a parent I can see where such a law is useful. My kids would not be pestering me to buy things they saw on TV.

[Chase McCain]

As a parent I can see where such a law is useful. My kids would not be pestering me to buy things they saw on TV.

Publicity and maketing sometimes can become brain washing to the children. Here is legal and near Christmas is absolute madness. Probably 6 out of 10 commercials are aimed for children and many become obcessed about those toys. Prices go up and parents usually don't know how to educate their children in responsible shopping and advertising filtering (when they are not too young to understand). Also, deceptive advertising is too common and children often become easy targets.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Chase McCain

[CorneliusMurdock]

Sheepeater, I'd like to ask you to not use the term "retarded" to refer to something that is "stupid". There are a myriad of words that better describe stupidity that don't offend people.

[SheepEater]

Publicity and maketing sometimes can become brain washing to the children. Here is legal and near Christmas is absolute madness. Probably 6 out of 10 commercials are aimed for children and many become obcessed about those toys. Prices go up and parents usually don't know how to educate their children in responsible shopping and advertising filtering (when they are not too young to understand). Also, deceptive advertising is too common and children often become easy targets.

Maybe, but you never lived with this law as a kid like I did.

Me and my brother were dumbfounded that the ads were on all english channels, but not french ones and never really questioned why. That didn't stop us from bugging our parents about toys, games. I think were actually starting to feel excluded from the english speaking world. So all these cool toys are only for english speaking boys and not us? Yeah call me spoiled, but I don't see how toy ads are negative towards kids. As a 9 year old, I LOVED those ads - their rarity added to their appeal. Furthermore this was pre-internet, we lived in a small town with no big stores and it was the only way to know more about toys than a small picture in a catalogue.