Disney takes page from Popeye, promotes healthy foods

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This article was published 06/05/2009 (6087 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FROM Goofy greens to Hannah Montana apples and even baby cucumbers branded with Zac Efron’s baby face, healthy foods are enjoying new-found kid appeal thanks to marketing efforts that license TV and movie actors and characters for their packaging.

Disney Garden, a branded line of fruits and vegetables, is reporting 300 per cent growth in Canada over last year. Competitors such as Nickelodeon and Discovery Kids are adopting similar strategies at the supermarket to get children to eat their vegetables.

“When you have Ronald McDonald, who is very recognizable, on the fast-food side, and you have the Disney characters on the side of fruits and vegetables, it seems to even the playing field,” says Debi Andrus, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business.

But while Disney and others have shrewdly framed these healthy-lifestyle initiatives as corporate social responsibility, Andrus instead sees them as just another “opportunity to extend their brand(s).”

Their possible agendas, however, are inconsequential to some Canadian parents who have long endeavoured to make cucumbers the new cookies.

In the 1930s, Popeye’s endorsement of spinach gave the leafy greens an expected halo among consumers, causing sales to spike by 33 per cent. But with few exceptions, the partnering of kids’ characters with food products has, until recently, been limited to fast food, sweet treats, and sugary cereals.

The fallout has included a tripling of children and adolescents defined as overweight since the 1970s to an estimated one in five. In response, the Federal Trade Commission last year called for entertainment companies of all stripes to “limit the licensing of their characters to healthier foods and beverages that are marketed to children.”

Although Imagination Farms, the licensee for Disney Garden, won’t reveal dollar figures, the company reports sales of more than 10 million servings of fresh produce in Canada last year through the Disney Garden line.

“What we’re trying to do is make fresh produce more fun, and as appealing to children as sweets might be,” says Michael Caito, CEO of Imagination Farms.

— Canwest News Service