by Cal Wilson ’14

Marketing has always been a lucrative business: get a poor, helpless sap to purchase your useless product. A lot of thought goes into every aspect of every advertisement. Since 2010, there has been a rapid increase in companies promoting violence and acrimony, and the Parent Organization for Protecting Kids (POP-Kids) has launched a campaign against the “seemingly comedic commercials with underlying societal aggression like looting and smoking.”

The popular candy brand “Mike and Ike,” owned by Just Born Inc., has recently become just “Mike and Ike.” The specific disagreements between Mike and Ike are unknown but the results are beginning to surface with alcoholism rates increasing for the younger generation as more and more kids begin to ask, “Mommy, can I have some Mikes?”

Mars Inc. is another company popularizing disagreement with their “Twix” commercials, putting the left candy bar against the right. In the commercial, there are two separate factories, one factory reportedly “cloaks” their cookies in chocolate while the other “flows chocolate on cookies.” The hatred between the feuding factories has been rumored to have influenced the disagreement on the federal budget.

The recent M&M commercials involving humans devouring the M&M mascots could also have a lasting effect on the youth. Think about it. Should kids really be watching people eat other candy people? The candy being eaten resembles a real human being with arms, legs and a face, and cannibalism isn’t a value to be instilled in the feeble minds of America’s youth.

POP-Kids and various other parent advocacy groups have been pressuring a joint operation between Coke and Pepsi to sign an agreement, ending their rivalry and declaring Dr. Pepper better than them all.