It's by no means a new thing.
Way back in the 90's a group of child psychologists whose colleagues were being recruited at high salaries to work with advertising agencies and manufacturers, wrote an open letter (I think it was in The Times) deploring such practices.
They warned that children's burgeoning psyche would be harmed and their brains 'progammed' by TV adverts.
They were laughed at.
Then I came across an interesting but scary article about how 'hidden influences' in advertising, encourage children to badger parents - and how effective this was.
Parents who said 'no' to importunate requests felt guilty and often subsequently bought the denied item later.
Parents who gave in for peace and quiet, had surrendered to the known influences.
But it wasn't just children being brainwashed into asking for goods, it was children being taught how to make their parents feel guilty.
One of the things I discovered a little later was that diet companies paid a huge premium for their adverts to appear amid children's progammes on TV, particularly for pre-schoolers.
The argument was that Mums were likely to be watching with toddlers and would want to lose be made to feel ashamed of 'baby weight' which hadn't gone away.
In fact, it was worse than that. Child psychologists
working for ad agencies had advised that the earlier you could get the message 'fat is shameful and unhealthy' into the minds of children, the more they were likely to make Mummy feel ashamed, 'Mummy why do you have a fat tummy?'
But also, with such oft-repeated messages, it was easier to get the children (as adolescents) themselves on the deadly and unending dieting trail.
We can all see this worked like a charm.
www.huffpost.com/entry/how-advertisers-manipulat_b_718227