Save the Lorax! Corporate Messaging Pollutes New Film Release
TAKE ACTION!
“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” — The Lorax
For more than forty years, Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax has been a clarion call for conservation. Generations of children have been moved by its powerful tale of how rampant greed and consumerism destroyed the forest of Truffula Trees and the Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans, and Humming-Fish that depended on them. But now the book’s powerful message is in danger of being crushed by a real-life landslide of corporate greed.
This Friday, Universal Pictures’ The Lorax arrives in theaters—with dozens of corporate tie-ins. While the story teaches children to conserve the earth’s finite resources, these heavily advertised partnerships compel them to consume, consume, consume.
Read the book with your children. See the movie if you must. But tell the corporations that have kidnapped the Lorax you want nothing to do with:
- The new Mazda CX-5 SUV—the only car with the “Truffula Seal of Approval.”
- Seventh Generation household products and diapers festooned with the Lorax.
- IHOP’s kids’ menu items like Rooty Tooty Bar-Ba-Looty Blueberry Cone Cakes and Truffula Chip Pancakes.
- In-store promotions featuring the Lorax at Whole Foods, Pottery Barn Kids, and Target.
- Online Lorax games and sweepstakes for YoKids Yogurt, Comcast Xfinity TV, Target, IHOP, and HP.
- HP’s “Every Inkling Makes a Difference” in-school curriculum produced and distributed by Scholastic.
It is both cynical and hypocritical to use a beloved children’s story with a prescient environmental message to sell kids on everything from SUVs to pancakes. The Lorax that we know and love has more integrity than his current incarnation as the darling of Madison Avenue. If that notoriously reclusive Lorax ever agreed to appear in a film, he would say a resounding “NO” to any commercial tie-ins. He would help children curb their consumption instead of promoting a slew of “greener” products. He would tell corporations to stop bombarding kids with materialistic messages. He would never immerse children in the false corporate narrative that we can consume our way to everything, from happiness to sustainability. Instead, he would join everyone who cares about children and the earth to give kids time and space to grow up free of commercial pressures.
We hope you will, too.
Help your children really be like the Lorax. Sign our pledge to shun The Lorax’s corporate cross-promotions and urge your friends and family to do the same.
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If you’re on Twitter, please click to tweet: I just pledged to #SaveTheLorax. Because the #Lorax I know wouldn’t sell kids on @MazdaUSA SUVs or @IHOP. http://bit.ly/x21GOq