Remember when you could get a Happy Meal at McDonald’s and get the latest Disney movie figures, toys and glasses? Well, the Disney Company got a little nervous when it saw so many American kids getting fatter and less fit on the fast food fare so they begged off the 10-year agreement they had with McDonald’s. Mind you, it cost the Disney Company over $100 million a year in royalties to end that relationship but they felt it was the right thing to do. (They also saw the market for junk food dropping while the market for healthy foods began expanding along with Americans’ awareness that they were raising a generation of obese, diabetic, super-sized kids.
Now Disney has partnered with the UK’s grocery big-wig, Tesco, with the introduction of a new co-branded line of healthy snacks. Tesco shoppers will start seeing Disney cartoon characters appearing on selected fresh fruit lines beginning this month. Eventually, they plan to expand the partnership into yogurt and breakfast cereals. Apparently, the UK has recently cracked down on cartoon characters peddling foods that are high in fat, sugar or salt. The folks at Disney feel that by promoting foods like fresh fruits, yogurt and cereals they’ll be seen as more responsible. Of course, the fact that advertising junk food during children’s programs has been banned pretty much leaves Disney with no choice but to go healthy.
They’ve done much the same in Australia too. There, they’ve introduced new product lines including pure spring water, dried fruits, diluted infant juice, fresh fruit and vegetables and even bread.
In the interest of promoting healthier eating (and shopping), Disney is helping its healthy food lines along by producing short television segments, to be aired during popular Disney Channel shows like Hannah Montana, that will promote healthy eating in younger kids and tweens. The series, called “Pass the Plate”, will premiere in Australia in January 2008.