Anton Troianovski, “Child’s Play: Food Makers Hook Kids on Mobile Games,” The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2012

“U.S. food companies are reaching children by embedding their products
in simple and enticing games for touch-screen phones and tablets,” writes
The Wall Street Journal’s Anton Troianovski in this September 18, 2012, article
examining how food and beverage manufacturers allegedly use mobile
games and phone apps to sidestep “government and public pressure to limit
advertising to minors on TV and the Web.” According to Troianovski, some of
these companies have argued that food-branded apps are a cost-effective
marketing tool that would not violate any advertising restrictions because
parents much purchase the games first. “We don’t view it as our place to be a
superparent—the nanny of the parents or the children to say what products
that can see and what games they can play,” Children’s Food and Beverage
Advertising Initiative Director Elaine Kolish told the Journal.

Troianovski notes, however, that the proliferation of such apps has raised questions among consumer advocates about whether parents or government should police their impact on children. “Right now there are some limits to how much exposure kids can have to advertising on the Internet just because they’re not always sitting at a computer,” Jennifer Harris, the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity’s director of marketing practices, was quoted as saying. “But if they have their phone with them, they can be playing these games that are basically advertisements in school and basically 24/7.”