Dear folks at Milk Media and Milk Rocks,

My 5 year-old son came home from school excited to tell me about what he had learned. Unfortunately, he had learned about a "new dot com". When I asked where he learned about it, he told me it was on his milk carton at lunch. The ad for Bakugan and the website caught his eye. He was excited about the prospect of winning a Nintendo Wii and checking out the website to play games and watch videos.

Let's just say I was less than thrilled. Surprised and enraged? Yes. I checked out the Milk Rocks website and saw that it is geared to much older kids and has content that is not appropriate for young kids (the Commando video game, trailers for violent movies, etc.). The motto bothers me as well. "Plug in. Drink up." How does "plugging in" contribute to the healthy life choices you are promoting? Many, many of us (parents and professionals) are working incredibly hard to get kids unplugged and involved in healthy, quality play. You are clearly undermining those efforts.

I strongly suggest you suspend your practice of marketing pop culture and video games to ALL our school children. As a parent, I do not consider this a "win-win-win-win" situation as your website describes. There are clear winners, for sure, but they are not parents or students.

I look forward to your response,

Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin
founder and director of
Empowered by Play