Spoiler Alert: Transformers and Bratz

Work with me on this -- I think that "Transformers" and "Bratz" are pretty much the same movie. Or rather, they're the gender-specific sides of the same movie. On the side of the snips and snails and puppy-dog tails, we have "Transformers." Over on the sugar and spice and everything nice side, we have "Bratz." But they have more in common than both being essentially dramatic infomercials to sell dolls, I mean action figure robots and dolls and having Jon Voight as an ineffectual authority figure. They are both about the power of transformation (girl terminology: makeover), that ultimate metaphor for adolescence and growing up. And they are both about high school kids triumphing over big, powerful monsters who want to control everything. The Transformers have Megatron. The Bratz have a Mean Girl named Meredith.

PG-13 Transformers movie marketed to children

I suppose it should not be a suprise, coming from a television series that was created to sell toys back in 1984, but the new "Transformers" movie and its various tie-ins and toys are being marketed to children much younger than the PG-13 rating suggests for the viewing audience.

Citing the widespread and irresponsible marketing of the PG-13 Transformers movie to preschoolers, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to expand their investigation of the marketing of violent entertainment to children to include PG-13 movies. The film, which opens on July 4, 2007, was rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, brief sexual humor, and language” by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). A review by CCFC found more than one hundred Transformers’ toys for children under six; Transformer promotions by Kraft and Burger King clearly aimed at young children; and advertisements for the movie on children’s television programming rated appropriate for kids as young as two.

CCFC has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, available here.