Over a school holiday term break we headed to SE England to temporarily escape the Welsh monsoon season (when friends visit from abroad and comment on how lushly green everything is here, I say, “it’s mold”).

After a week eating sign advertised “Great British Food” (your pun goes here about this oxy-moron) in “kid-friendly” restaurants and pubs with rather elaborate climbing frames and ball rooms, I was simultaneously disgusted and awed (somewhat like witnessing a car crash in slow motion) by the preponderance of marketing machines aimed directly at children with we parents as the unwitting sidekicks/stooges in their little drama.

My own three are an impressionable 8, 7 and 6 and it seems the sole operating principle is to hook kids whilst young, create the “I want that” mantra inside of them which looks somewhat like loyalty and induces a noise level and nag factor at such a fevered pitch that our young semi-professional extortionists wear we already weary parents down further. They (the marketers and our kids) seem magically to know the point at which we give up the fight (or is it the ghost?) because they will both make our lives a living hell of cuteness and amped up cheery theme music if we continue to resist. Since they intuitively know the unofficial Microsoft world motto, “resistance is futile, you will be assimilated,” we end up giving in, if only for a moment’s peace.

The diamond standard remains the McDonalds Happy Meal which ties together cheap toys you would never pay money for with whatever the new Disney/Pixar or DreamWorks animated hit film is to be months before release, creating “must-have” character toys and figurines that one digs out from under beds, in the crease of sofa cushions and half eaten remains from the dog’s bed, all discarded within minutes of one’s arrival home. Having shelled out close £10 for “food” (note this includes the Mix ‘n Muddle ice cream dish that allows them to make their own sundae) this is just cruel!

The emerging gold standard is shoe seller Clarks who, much to my chagrin, embedded Yo Toys in the see-through heel of children’s shoes. (I suppose silver could go to the inventor of roller wheels in the heels of trainers but the danger factor of a downhill out of control child into traffic is more suited for future X Games competitors.)

When middle daughter’s shoe strap imploded along Brighton’s pebbled beach, we duly set off the next morning to purchase new shoes. Of course they all seem to magically wear out at the same moment and growth is occurring in such spurts that I am contemplating doing what my mother threatened “the boxes are what you will wear next!”

Three pairs of Yo Toy shoes later at the Clarks in Lewes, we were £85 to the poorer and the victims of dual muggings, 1st by our kids and then by the smiling, professional and ever-friendly Clarks fitting/sales staff. (Why couldn’t they have been more like BT Ben’s crowd so I could have walked out in a huff?)

The sheer ingenuity awes me. Embedded in the heel of my son’s trainers was a “some assembly required” beach car complete with garage house that fits into the shoe box lid. My daughters ended up with differently themed dolls and doll’s houses and they all three played together quietly for about two hours.

So I had to call their Public Relations Manager, John Keery to find out the genesis of these. “Clarks has done a number of programs in the past. ‘Magic Steps’ was a campaign around girl’s shoes built around a fairy story where the point of sale material showed a fairy and how the shoes enabled the girls to have magic steps to defeat the witch.”

Like most companies Clarks looked at what was going on in the market and to other products. The YoToys program started last autumn season with about one million pairs of shoes sold to date.

Jane Wilson, their Product and Merchandising Director said, “YoToys were inspired by our desire to create a new generation of children – the YoToy Generation - whose interaction with footwear was a fun and imaginative experience. We wanted to take footwear beyond the functional level to enter the world of a child’s imagination.”

I can see it now, morphing shoe tag lines into a Pepsi advert? YoToys, the Choice of a Whole New Generation? You’ve done everyting else well so here’s a marketing suggestion, for lots of reasons, leave Michael Jackson out of kids shoe marketing adverts. It didn’t work for Pepsi. I’m pretty sure it won’t work for you.