The long-awaited Transformers movie premieres tonight. If you're in your late-20s or early 30s, and watched the Transformers cartoons as a kid, you probably have a desire to see this "PG-13" action extravaganza. But beware: According to Susan Linn, a psychologist who co-founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Transformers is being marketed towards children. Brooks Barnes of the New York Times said in an article this morning that the live-action film is packed with cars and planes that turn into "blood-thirsty alien robots." In a PG-13 fight between good and evil, do you expect anything less?
The problem, according to Linn, is that Dreamworks and Hasbro, Inc (NYSE: HAS) are going after preschoolers with their "widespread and irresponsible" marketing of the movie. "Movie studios have been using toys to market movies in unfair ways for a long time," says Linn. "But this is a movie that was designed from the beginning to sell toys and that makes this case particularly egregious."
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