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Compares toy commercials in France, Germany and Italy in relation to globalisation, which is claimed to produce a uniform consumer culture. Investigates the roles performed by different territories (international, national, regional and local) in advertising directed at children of these different nationalities. Focuses on the apparent tendency towards universalism in the form and content of TV commercials aimed at children, based on a comparative analysis of 163 commercials for toys. Finds that the commercials in the three countries used the same types of persuasion, with toys linked to fantasy worlds, different depictions of boys and girls, and reference to a widely shared extra‐textual body of knowledge; international commercials were much more standardised than for other types of products, and images crossed national boundaries more easily than language, with various reinventions of voiceovers and other verbal messages. Concludes that transnational toy advertising cannot escape local obstacles linked to sociocultural variables.

This paper aims to explore how the discursive strategies used in advertising contribute to bringing food products into the children's world, to transforming them into children's food – fun food in particular.

The analysis focuses on a sample of advertisements on food products that appeared from 1950 to 2005 in Le Journal de Mickey (France), Micky Maus (Germany) and Topolino (Italy). The paper aims to study the social implications of food advertisement targeting children through the analysis of their graphic composition, verbal language, visual language, and narrative structure.

This research shows that, since the 1950s in France, Germany and Italy, advertising discourse targeting children has tended to emphasize the pleasure dimension of consuming foods, linking the products with fun and play and making the break with the tastes, norms and expectations of adults.

While extensive research has been conducted on television food commercials, little attention has been paid to other advertising media. The study provides a historical and comparative analysis of food advertisements in the children's press.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Americanization of European advertising in the post‐war years as a phenomenon of cultural transfer and it aims to explore the interaction between the USA and Italian advertising traditions during the 1950s and the 1960s.

The analysis is in two parts. First, the role of those cross‐cultural mediators who contributed to changing marketing communication strategies of many Italian companies during the 1950s and the 1960s is studied. Second, the ways in which US advertising rules and patterns are combined with the local tradition in order to fit the Italian context of the post‐war years are looked at. The research is based on a study of the main USA and Italian marketing and advertising literature of the post‐war years, and on an analysis of press campaigns and TV commercials.

This research shows that during the 1950s and the 1960s, the conflict between the American approach and the Italian approach to advertising did not prevent interaction and negotiation. In the post‐war years, the USA know‐how and practices, are re‐interpreted through the process of transfer to Italy, creating original, and unexpected solutions.

Although some research has been conducted on the Italian advertising scene during the post‐World War II years, the few existing contributions did not focus on the interaction between the imported American model and the local traditions. This paper provides a good overview of the ways in which notions, methodologies, and strategies coming from the USA are implemented.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence and influence of US advertising in Italy between the early 1950s and the mid-1970s.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence and influence of US advertising in Italy between the early 1950s and the mid-1970s.

The paper argues that there is a need to further qualify and deconstruct the notion of “Americanization” by integrating the now well-established notions of “hybridization” and “mediation” with more specific attention to the competing “hearts and souls”, the different strategies and discursive practices that different individual actors (American, British and Italian) operating within the Italian advertising business tried to instil into goods and consumers and the economic and cultural results that they achieved.

This is the first research on the history of Italian advertising that fully places it within a transnational and comparative perspective using so far unpublished records, aiming at moving beyond traditional, eastbound Americanization frameworks through a detailed empirical investigation.

Interaction – above all, food consumption, the fact of eating together – is connected to human representations and human fears. All of these are involved in socialization, particularly in educative mechanisms (such as rules at table, regulation/moderation, apprenticeship) and pleasure (tasting discovery and games). This paper proposes to show the paradox between education (often in relation with health) and pleasure (in all forms) in food, using a cultural object appreciated in childhood, i.e. picture books.

The study is based on a sociology thesis about the representations of food in picture books (50 picture books for children under six years of age, which were selected in bookshops to identify how food, the child and daily life are represented in fiction) and how they are used, and on a collection of data from interviews with professionals and parents (qualitative approach to analysis).

The paper finds social representations which corroborate the eater paradox. Between education and pleasure, between discovery and fear, the forms of food consumption are numerous in the picture books.

The paper shows that social representations are signified in all items for children and reveals the importance of this medium.

This paper aims to present the first results of research in progress on the history of candy, which reveals the children's gourmand culture since the Renaissance. It is a matter of showing the links between children and sweetness and how sweetness is entered, under the name of “candy”, in children's culture.

The study is conducted with historical methods. It is based on sources on the community of pharmacists, confectioners, grocers, confectioners' advertising, and an approach using historical lexicography, general literary sources, children's literature, and childhood memories in autobiographies.

The paper proves how the word “bonbon” was born in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century to signify the link between candies and childhood. The study shows how confectioners appeared and became organised and it is a surprise to discover that they did not use the word “bonbon” for their candies and pralines. One has to wait until the end of the eighteenth century before the confectionary market designates children as its main target. But the texts and the first moral tales of children's literature show that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries “bonbons” belong to the children's material world, such as toys, and that adults were glad to give them candies as a present.

The study is limited to France and does not analyse the contemporary period.

The study is very new: any scientific enquiry has been conducted on the history of candy in children's culture and on the history of the confectioner trade.

This paper seeks to investigate how fun food products are marketed in a French chain of supermarkets. It aims to deal with the difficulty in marketing a fun food product in an environment that is not children‐friendly.

The research rests on a case study, conducted through interviews, observations, and photographs.

The paper shows that, despite the lack of consideration for children in supermarket settings, the private brand of the chain, given its control on the entire distribution system, manages to invent a kind of fun merchandising.

This is an exploratory case study that would need further research in other chains and/or other countries.

The paper shows the importance of merchandising, beyond the mere design of products. This neglected dimension could be of interest for regulators as well as professionals.

Research on child consumption focuses more on the products, packaging or advertising than on their immediate market environment. This paper helps to bring a better balance between these different dimensions, as well as an understanding of the importance of their articulation.

This paper aims to understand, from a theoretical standpoint and from an empirical perspective, why food products can be designed and perceived as “playful” and “funny”. Drawing on the experiential framework developed in marketing research and recent advances in theories of play, it seeks to clarify the conceptual articulation of “play” with “fun” and it seeks to highlight the need to reconsider the contribution of the product in framing situations that children experience as “playful” and “fun”.

The paper focuses on qualitative data gathered through a combination of observations and in‐depth interviews of 14 dyads “child‐mother” confronted by four product innovations at a prototype stage, and a series of eight focus groups involving children from three to eight years old as well as their mothers.

Children were very able to categorize food products by appreciating their different degrees of fun. The study led to the identification and coding of 13 key dimensions associated with “playfulness” and “fun” in a food product.

The paper offers a heuristic operational tool to guide marketing managers and R&D teams in their exploration and testing of the possibilities/impossibilities in the association of “playfulness” and “fun” with food products aimed at children.

The research demonstrates that some dimensions which characterize play cannot be directly applied to food products, and differentiates “playful” from “fun” by considering the intensity of the social interaction being developed through the food product or food consumption situation.