Day 299 - 13 Nov 96 - Page 39


     
     1        cannot have advertisements where someone says to the
     2        children, "Go and get your parents to take you to
     3        McDonald's"  then you just do it rather more subtly than
     4        that.  I mean, that is, it seems to me, to be the real
     5        point of it.  Anyway, there you are.  If all this is just
     6        designed to say that the first and second Plaintiffs and
     7        the agencies who advise them give a great deal of extremely
     8        careful consideration to how, through children's
     9        advertising, to make the McDonald's stores or restaurants
    10        very attractive to children, I think there cannot be my
    11        dispute about that.
    12
    13   MS. STEEL:   It all goes to how McDonald's and their advertising
    14        agencies put a great deal of effort into how to manipulate
    15        children and play on their emotions to get them into their
    16        stores to eat the junk food.
    17
    18   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Anyway, I have made my feelings so far clear
    19        about that.
    20
    21   MS. STEEL:   I am not going to go through all of them.  There
    22        were a couple more I wanted to point out.  Birdy, the early
    23        bird, appears on bundle page 61, and Birdy the early bird
    24        symbolises breakfast as McDonald's.  "As an early bird,
    25        Birdy greets the morning with particular delight especially
    26        because morning means breakfast at McDonald's."  Then
    27        further on down, it says, "Birdy is McDonald's first female
    28        character.  Her enthusiasm and energy are infectious and
    29        serve to encourage her friends to start the day with a good
    30        breakfast.  As she often says, 'you can't get off the
    31        ground without breakfast', she let us her friends know that
    32        McDonald's serves a good one".  That is an indication of
    33        intent from the company to encourage children to think that
    34        they should start every day with a breakfast at McDonald's
    35        because you cannot get off the ground without breakfast.
    36
    37        Then there is the HamBurglar.  This is on page 62.  "The
    38        HamBurglar is the most mischievous character in all
    39        McDonaldland.  His main purpose in life is the acquisition
    40        of McDonald's hamburgers.  He is not above borrowing them
    41        without payment, and nobody expects payment."  This is
    42        directly relevant to the part in the leaflet which states
    43        that "appetite, necessity and, above all, money never enter
    44        the innocent world of ronald mcdonald" and the part about
    45        "burgers and chips being provided for everybody at any
    46        hour of the day", and so on.
    47
    48        Obviously, later on it describes how the "Hamburglar cannot
    49        help being what he is in that other characters try to keep
    50        hamburgers safe from him, but his behaviour never angers
    51        anyone in McDonaldland.  After all, the temptation is too
    52        great for him to resist."  So there is a suggestion there
    53        of his addiction to hamburgers, and children might find it
    54        attractive to copy that, particularly if they see that his
    55        behaviour does not anger anyone despite the fact that he is
    56        getting all these burgers for nothing.
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Yes.  I can't say I was terribly impressed
    59        with that.  I take your point that it is about the
    60        suggestion that they are irresistible.

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