Transformers Toys to Transform Legal Landscape?

Special-interest group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood makes noise about toys marketed to young children for the upcoming PG-13-rated (nearly R-rated as star Shia LaBeouf alleged) Transformers movie.

The Michael-Bay-directed movie, an update of a popular 80s TV show that unleashed a world of marketing back in its heyday, is designed as a tie-ins-centric blockbuster for the 2007 summer and thus requires a new line of toys to showcase its Transformers revamp. Die-hard, retro-savvy fans rev-up for the new Optimus Prime toy truck, and kiddies get amped for pretty much any mold of plastic, as long as it's flashy and popular (READ: marketed well).

The Boston-based special-interest group insists that it is wrong for toy manufacturers Hasbro and movie producers DreamWorks to label their toys as suitable for ages 3 since the toys are based on a movie labeled as not suitable for children under 13.

Although the Federal Trade Commission (a government agency that restricts R-rated movies from marketing to children) still sits on the sideline for this issue, Commercial-Free Childhood raises an important legal question: if combat-oriented toys are based on a combat-oriented movie deemed inappropriate for children under 13 by one official organization (the Motion Pictures Association of America) because of the violence of its combat-orientation, should another official organization allow corporations to market said mimetic toys to children under said cut-off point? If people see a problem with letting kids of a certain age view a violent movie because of its presumed negative sociological ramifications, then why should those very kids be allowed to play with toys directly derived from such a movie and fully displaying the detrimental violence of such a movie? Worse, if people can condone letting children play with these toys, can they go one step further and allow businesses to encourage children to play with said toys, thus ensuring that they will? The legal issue is knotty and very unresolved.

Transformers opens July 3. Information from New York Times used in this article.