Cartoon characters pull kids to eat, hopefully, produce

SpongeBob SquarePants, Shrek and other cartoon characters can encourage kids to eat fruits and vegetables, but they're even more compelling when it comes to candy say four Yale researchers.

The study found that children significantly prefer foods that have popular cartoon characters on the packages, compared to foods without them.

In the study  4 to 6 year olds were more likely to prefer the taste of graphm crackers, gummy fruit snacks and baby carrots if characters like Dora the Explorer, Scooby Do or Shrek were on the package.  The taste perception was the weakest for carrots, suggesting that using characters on healthy dfoods may not be an effective strategy to rpomote consumption of those foods.

Source: Yale study