[Life] Exercising bears

I was watching Kim Possible this morning and marvelling at the way that the wonderfulness of the show is heightened by the absolute terribleness of the commercials that bracket it, when an ad for Carebears came on. And not the Carebears of my youth, plain-ish teddy bears each with a squishy-warm emotionally supportive message embodied as a cartoon on its belly, but some weird and horrible mechanized bear standing on a plinth, twisting and bending in jerky, Night-of-the-Living-Dead fashion while tinny voices sang songs about useless exercise. Touch your toes! And now your nose!

And while I am reeling from the sheer awfulness of this concept (why do marketing execs think that putting hard mechanical devices inside stuffed animals is a good idea?) suddenly the bears face one another and start singing "Let's get Physical." Behind them, children laugh and cavort in tight, brightly coloured exercise gear.

Okay, kids won't know that song is about sex. Maybe. I don't underestimate the ability of children to figure shit out. But their parents will know. Is it funny to associate children's toys with sex and watch the kids play, not knowing that the words they are singing along with describe carnal acts? It makes me near incoherant with rage when people pull this kind of crap with kids, this sly, wink and nod sort of trickery, setting some kid up to fall afoul of situations or concepts that they aren't prepared to deal with and then laughing at the kid's inappropriate (by grown up standards) response.

Wow, that went pretty far off field. Dancing Carebears, oppressors of our youth. I hope that fulfilled my rant quota for the day, cuz I'm a bit tired now.