I am so frustrated with movie marketing that targets young kids for PG-13 movies.
I remember in 2009 when Avatar was in theaters. The movie was rated PG-13 and Avatar themed toys were in McDonald's Happy Meals. My daughter was almost 4 at the time, and wanted to know why she was getting toys for a movie that I went to see that she couldn't.
Last sumer with the release of The Avengers, I noticed a lot of marketing to young children. The Avengers were on the cover of LEGO Club Jr (for children under 7), young children were in the Target commercial, etc. At the time we were able to deflect our daughter to the Disney XD cartoon. We let her watch the movie on DVD after the release at home. Watching the movie at home gave us more control. We could distract her through a more disturbing/violent scene and the smaller screen and low-level lights made them less scary.
Since then she has watched Captain American and Thor and enjoyed both movies. In these movies, we felt that the violence was the main reason for the PG-13, so we were ok We held off on Iron Man since it earned the PG-13 status for more than just violence.
However, with Iron Man 3 being released, we did let her watch Iron Man last weekend using the same techniques as well as fast-forwarding though a few scenes. We are hoping to repeat the process this weekend with Iron Man 2.
When I was in Target last week I saw plenty of Iron Man 3 picture books and easy readers that are marketed towards emerging readers who are well under the PG-13 age. Now, I saw a Subway commercial for Kids Meals in an Iron Man 3 bag that includes a chance for the grown-up to win a ticket to see Iron Man 3. In my experience, Kids Meals are designed for kids under age 10 or so. Even though they are advertising the ticket as for the adult, I find it extremely frustrating that the ticket giveaway is linked to the purchase of a Kids Meal. I'd feel better if the giveaway code was linked to an adult purchase.
While we did make the decision to let our daughter watch Avengers when it came out on DVD, I feel that a PG-13 film should not be directly marketed towards children under the age of 10. Our plan for Iron Man 3 (and Thor: The Dark World in November) is to see the movie without her and evaluate whether she can see it in the theaters or whether we will wait for video and watch it at home like we did with the others.
