Weetabix app ‘made children feel inferior’

Weetabix has been ordered to remove its WeetaKid app after a British watchdog ruled that it was likely to make children feel inferior if they did not eat the company’s products.

The app included two games featuring the WeetaKid character and started with prompts such as “I’ve given you access to a place you can go every day to get all the energy you need” and “Do you have a WeetaKid Weetabix box?”.

Players who responded in the negative received a message reading: “What?! No Weetabix?! Why make things harder for yourself?” and “Remember what I told you! A failure to prepare is preparation for failure!”, !or “No Weetabix? Disaster!”

Agnes Nairn, who investigates issues related to marketing, ethics, and children, and the Family and Parenting Institute complained that the app “exploited the credulity, loyalty, vulnerability or lack of experience of children by making them feel inferior or unpopular for not buying a product” and included a direct exhortation to children to buy an advertised product.

Weetabix said the game took place in an imaginary and fantastical world, arguing that children who played computer games disassociated what happened in them from the real world and interpreted messages only as a means to continue with the game.

However, the UK advertising standards authority !! ruled that the app must not appear again in its current form and added: “We told Weetabix to ensure that their marketing communications that were directly targeted at children did not exploit their credulity or vulnerability or make them feel inferior if they did not buy, or ask their parents to buy, Weetabix’s products.”