The Mickey Mouse Club

[stilltrucking]

Marketing and Self-Regulation

We have said something about television. Now, what is a child? A child is a young animal learning to be a human....(Schramm et al. 1961, 142).

. Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills

We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at the National Institute for Early Education Research says, the results were very different.
"Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=19212514

[stilltrucking]

I can't help wondering about this bit from the show above. It seems to me that children have had toys as long as we have been human.

On October 3, 1955, the Mickey Mouse Club debuted on television. As we all now know, the show quickly became a cultural icon, one of those phenomena that helped define an era.

What is less remembered but equally, if not more, important, is that another transformative cultural event happened that day: The Mattel toy company began advertising a gun called the "Thunder Burp."

I know — who's ever heard of the Thunder Burp?

Well, no one.

The reason the advertisement is significant is because it marked the first time that any toy company had attempted to peddle merchandise on television outside of the Christmas season. Until 1955, ad budgets at toy companies were minuscule, so the only time they could afford to hawk their wares on TV was during Christmas. But then came Mattel and the Thunder Burp, which, according to Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, was a kind of historical watershed. Almost overnight, children's play became focused, as never before, on things — the toys themselves.

"It's interesting to me that when we talk about play today, the first thing that comes to mind are toys," says Chudacoff. "Whereas when I would think of play in the 19th century, I would think of activity rather than an object."

[Doreen Peri]

Roll call, Mouseketeers, count off now!

DOREEN!

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/njtYHiBG340&re ... ram><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/njtYHiBG340&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
Beauty is as beauty does!

[stilltrucking]

Words to grow on
Beauty is not skin deep


I was kind of old for that show when it came out
about 15 I think. But I used to watch it for the those old black and white cartoons from the early days of Ho Wood.


You most have been knee hight ot a grasshopper when you saw that episode the first time.


You must have been a beautiful child
cause look at you now.
a beauty
in and out

"those who are parents, leave hostages to the future" JFK I think

[Doreen Peri]

awww... aren't you sweet...

Yeah, I was a toddler I think.

The Doreen on the Mickey Mouse Club was not me.

I know I had ya confused for a minute and you thought it might have been me.

[jimboloco]

kinky mousekateerz!

how does that hold your attention span
think ya can stand up for 5 minutes?

[stilltrucking]

Hardly any posts about children here. We got more important stuff to talk about.

I don't know what is behind the decrease in self-regulation. Not toys I don't think.

"our children are hostages to the future" JFK maybe not origingal but I heard him say something like that.

No child left behind
I wish I had gone into teaching
I wish I had not been so crazy and had children.

Maybe when Chelsea Clinton's great grand daughtter takes the oath of office in Washington DC when the torch passes to a new generation of americans born in the 21st century

maybe then
a child will not starve to death in san antonio texas on christmass day.

If I had it to do over again, I think I will be an anarchist monkey next time.

Is that the new iBoobs they are wearing?
News from apple computer

[what me worry?]

"Dave The Dov"Sounds titillating!!!!

you are my role model, sir, no fooling!
and doreen, beauty is as beauty does
you'ld look good with mouse ears tooo
no fooling