The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is a small advocacy group that last fall successfully got the Disney Company to offer full refunds to people who had purchased the company's "Baby Einstein" videos, which were supposed to make very young children into geniuses. But research found that Baby Einstein videos not only failed to make babies smarter, but they actually delayed language development in toddlers. Kids who watched the videos learned fewer words than babies who never watched them. In 2006, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood complained to the Federal Trade Commission about Disney's educational claims about the videos. As a result, Disney dropped the word "educational" from their marketing materials for the videos, but that wasn't enough. Lawyers threatened a class-action lawsuit for deceptive practices unless Disney agreed to refund the purchase price to everyone who had bought the videos. Disney finally agreed to the refund, calling it an "enhanced consumer satisfaction guarantee," without mentioning the product's defect or the lawyers' demands. Shortly after the New York Times announced the refunds, though, Disney contacted officials at the children's mental health center that had long housed and sponsored the Campaign, and pressured them to evict the Campaign, saying the group should not advocate against corporations (even though advocacy is a core responsibility of the 1963 law that provides federal financing for community mental health centers).

Smoke Free Movies, a project that aims to "reduce the U.S. film industry's usefulness to Big Tobacco's domestic and global marketing" has started running advertisements in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety about the movie Avatar. The ads state that,

For every $100 million it earns at the box office, Avatar ... will deliver an estimated forty million tobacco impressions to theater audiences. By the time it reaches Blu-Ray, VOD and broadband, Avatar's smoking scenes could be worth the equivalent of $50 million in broadcast cigarette ads. Of course, the United States outlawed cigarette commercials forty years ago. Did Big Tobacco pay for this? Taxpayers did. ... Avatar's tobacco imagery scored $30 million in public subsidies, according to the L.A. Times. The public is not only charged for 3D glasses to watch tobacco promotion, it pays for it again at tax time.

The information about taxpayers subsidizing smoking in big-screen movies comes from a November, 2009 report by the University of California San Francisco titled "Taxpayer Subsidies for US Films with Tobacco Imagery" that examined taxpayer subsidies for youth-rated films (G, PG and PG-13). The study revealed that 41 U.S. states compete for film projects by offering taxpayer-funded, public subsidies to motion picture producers, and that in 2008, states picked up about one quarter of total film production costs. The paper estimated that 62 percent of state film subsidies go to films that portray smoking. Studies show that there is more smoking in movies now than ever before, and that smoking in movies does, in fact, encourage kids to smoke.

James Cameron's new blockbuster movie Avatar won a "black lung" rating for gratuitous smoking from the Web site Scenesmoking.org, which rates motion pictures according to the amount of smoking they show. Avatar is a futuristic fantasy that takes place sometime in the 22nd century. In it, Sigourney Weaver plays an environmental scientist who puffs on cigarettes as she tries to save the moon Pandora. Cameron responded to the accusation of gratuitous smoking in Avatar by saying that smoking is a "filthy habit" that he does not support, but that smoking in movies is necessary to portray reality:

...[S]peaking as an artist, I don't believe in the dogmatic idea that no one in a movie should smoke. Movies should reflect reality.

Stanton Glantz, director of the University of California San Francisco's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, says the smoking scenes in Avatar hand millions of dollars' worth of free advertising to cigarette makers, and points out that the very idea of a chain-smoking environmental scientist is in itself a gratuitous bit of fantasy.

The global tobacco industry is holding a marketing conference in Bangkok, Thailand called TabInfo Asia, that it is billing as "the hottest event on the Asia Pacific tobacco market's calendar." Scheduled workshops pose questions like "What if you were in charge of a country's health system -- what would you do about smoking?" and seminars promise to discuss "future innovations in nicotine delivery systems."

One workshop, about the global increase in restrictions on smoking and advertising, asks "are we in danger of state-sponsored behaviour modification?" The featured speaker for this event is John Luik, a tobacco industry consultant who taught philosophy at Nazarene College in Winnipeg, Canada from 1977 to 1985, at which time he was fired for misrepresenting credentials on his resume. In 1985 he started teaching applied professional ethics at Brock University, but in 1990, Brock similarly discharged Luik, citing "misrepresentation of his credentials" and saying he was unable to fulfill his duties there "since he has apparently engaged in a series of misrepresentations of his professional and/or academic qualifications to three separate employers, and had done so again, on several occasions, to Brock University."

TabInfo Asia's program promises that Luik will "challenge you ... to come up with ingenious ways of operating in an increasingly regulated, plain-pack, dark market. Promises to be a fun, productive workshop."

In the middle of the H1N1 influenza epidemic, Kellogg is marketing Cocoa Krispies, Froot Loops and other sugary cereals with claims on the box that the cereal "now helps support your child's immunity." The word "immunity" is printed on the box in a huge font, almost as big as the name of the cereal. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera wrote a letter to Kellogg's CEO demanding evidence that the cereals really do help support children's immunity. Herrera points out that the company is playing to public fears about the H1N1 flu epidemic, saying "The immunity claims may also mislead parents into believing that service this sugary cereal will actually boost their child's immunity ..." Kellogg argues that critics of its immunity campaign are wrong, pointing out that the cereals contain increased amounts of vitamins A, C and E, which play a role in the immune system, and saying that "Kellogg developed this product in response to consumers expressing a need for more positive nutrition." Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University, author of Food Politics and other books about the food industry and nutrition, says, "The idea that eating Cocoa Krispies will keep a kid from getting swine flu, or from catching a cold, doesn't make sense. Yes, these nutrients are involved in immunity, but I can't think of a nutrient that isn't involved in the immune system." Professor Nestle wrote to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration protesting Kellogg's claims in August, but hasn't heard back, and FDA official are not permitted to discuss specific cases under consideration.

Wasting no time, video game startup Heyzap.com in San Francisco has created a video game based on Colorado's "Balloon Boy" hoax that is circulating on the Web and through Twitter. In it, a young Falcon Heene clings to a tinfoil muffin-like balloon while flying through the air trying to shoot down things that get in his way, like UFOs, rainbows and birds. At higher levels of play, Falcon encounters filmmaker Michael Moore in a helicopter. To win, the balloon boy must reach his secret attic. The game asks "How many $$$ of taxpayer money can you waste?" Players accumulate dollars based on the number of flying objects they can shoot down. Another Web site, Zazzle.com, is selling Balloon Boy T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, keychains, mugs and tote bags.

Cigarette makers have come up with a way to get around the new U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule banning flavored cigarettes. They have started making small, filtered cigars similar in size to cigarettes, that are flavored with clove, vanilla and cherry. Cigarettes are wrapped in paper, while cigars are wrapped in tobacco leaves or paper that contains reconstituted tobacco. Clove cigarettes, often known as "kreteks," are imported. The new, small cigars come 12 to a pack, fewer than the usual 20 in a pack of cigarettes, and cost about half as much as a pack of cigarettes. The FDA's ban on flavored cigarettes goes into effect at the end of September, but so far doesn't include cigars. The ban on flavorings was instituted on the belief that it would reduce the appeal of smoking to youth. Clove cigarettes became a fad among U.S. teenagers in the 1980s, and a June 18, 1985 Los Angeles Times article linked the eugenol in clove cigarettes to an increase in hospitalizations among teenagers for respiratory distress.

"Faced with declining sales for Gardasil, the controversial -- and so far only -- vaccine for prevention of human papillomavirus, Merck & Co. is planning to boost the drug's visibility during the key back-to-school shopping period beginning this month," reports Advertising Age. "Merck is participating in vaccination-day events with physicians' offices, clinics and nursing groups by offering supportive resources such as posters, mailers, consumer material and pocket cards that coincide with the time when kids and young adults typically get physicals before school starts in September." U.S. and worldwide sales of Gardasil have declined significantly since last year. On a recent "earnings conference call," Merck's executive vice-president of global human health, Ken Frazier, blamed the decrease on "saturation" of the "prime target of girls ages 13 to 18." So Merck is "firmly committed to achieving greater vaccination rates in the 19-to-26 age group," said Frazier, even though the vaccine must be administered before the onset of sexual activity to provide optimal protection. Merck has also asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve Gardasil for "use in boys and men ages 9 to 26 to prevent external genital lesions ... and for use in women ages 27 to 45." Merck's heavy lobbying of states to require Gardasil vaccinations -- including through the group Women in Government -- has been widely criticized.