Stages of Consumerism : Mass Advertising and Children ’ s Literature in Early Twentieth-Century Sweden

This chapter discusses the motif of the sentient product in adver­ tising during the 1930s and 1940s. The studied corpus consists of advertising that specifically targets children and adolescents but also short advertising films aimed at a wider audience. As a theo­ retical standpoint for my discussion, I apply Jean Baudrillardʼs theories about advertising and mass media and Nathalie op de Beeckʼs studies on the modern picture book of the interwar era and its connections to both the avant­garde and mass culture. The chapter proposes that children are to an increasing degree viewed as future members of the society but also as future consumers. The new ideas and marketing strategies expressed in the material also coincide with fundamental social changes in Swedish society resulting from modernity and new technologies. Consumption in general is described as an essential part of the modern, urban expe­ rience and the aesthetics used to describe this experience fluctuate between popular culture and experimental arts. In the black­and­white advertising film from 1938, The Pastille Dance (Pastilldansen) by Marabou, it is the commodities that take center stage (Figure 1). In the film, the product is used to form the bodies of a female and male figure, which are con­ structed with round, white and black cough pastilles “Tenor” and “Figaro.” The film depicts the inanimate products as dynamic and vivacious. They court each other, dance, whirl, and sing together, How to cite this book chapter: Druker, Elina. “Stages of Consumerism: Mass Advertising and Children’s Literature in Early Twentieth­Century Sweden.” In The Power of the In-Between: Intermediality as a Tool for Aesthetic Analysis and Critical Reflection, edited by Sonya Petersson, Christer Johansson, Magdalena Holdar, and Sara Callahan, 239–260. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/baq.j. License: CC­BY. 240 The Power of the In-Between accompanied by jazz music. The short sixty­second film then con­ cludes with a voice­over that informs the audience of the popu­ larity and price of the products (10 öre) while the trademarks and the candy boxes are carefully presented in a final shot.1 The film is one of many examples of 35 mm black­and­white advertising short films from the interwar era, shown in movie theatres prior to the main film, and most likely aimed at both children and adults. The motif of the anthropomorphic figures, as well as the dual target audience of the film, points at inter­ esting connections to children’s literature, where anthropomor­ phized characters and animals are a well­established motif from 1 Advertising short film Pastilldansen by Marabou 35 mm (length 1.37:1) black­and­white film, optic mono (1938). Available at the Film Archive of the Swedish Film Institute and National Library of Sweden, accessed April 10, 2017, http://www.filmarkivet.se/movies/marabou­pastilldansen/. Figure 1. Advertising short film The Pastille Dance. Produced by Marabou, 1938. Permission: Swedish Film Institute/Svenska Filminstitutet, Stockholm. License: CC­PD. Available at http://www.filmarkivet.se/movies/ marabou­pastilldansen/. Stages of Consumerism 241 ancient fables to modern­day stuffed bears, toy rabbits, and dolls. However, the choice of using the products as the main characters in The Pastille Dance seems to reflect a general change of attitude in relation to how the emerging product world is demonstrated in advertising, literature, and art. This change is expressed through an increased fascination with sentient machines, mechanical bod­ ies, and hybrids between human and machine. A similar interest is conveyed even in children’s books. As Nathalie op de Beeck notes in her study of the modernist picture book, “independent­minded machines became a trendy topic in children’s literature in the late 1920s and 1930s.”2 In this chapter, I will discuss how the motif of the sentient product is used in early advertising aimed to children. I will study so­called branded picture books published for children in the 1930s and 1940s as well as contemporary advertising short films, with a slightly ambiguous target group. In my discussion, I will apply Jean Baudrillard’s theories about advertising and mass media and Nathalie op de Beeck’s research on children’s literature of the interwar era, pointing at connections to both the avant­ garde and mass culture. My aim is to study how different kinds of media that address both adults and children during this time period were constructed and to discuss what kind of message was conveyed to the future consumers—children. Product Placement in Picture Books “Look at us! We are of the best quality—KF­shoes—but we must say that it is the polish—KF’s shoe polish—we have to thank for our radiant appearance.” “Now that is not quite true,” said the shoe polish. “I am quite modest, if I must say, and fair’s fair. Not even I could have helped you when it is so dirty outside, had you not used Gislaved’s galoshes and overshoes. It is thanks to them that you can stay so 2 Nathalie op de Beeck, “ʻThe First Picture Book for Modern Childrenʼ: Mary Liddellʼs ʻLittle Machineryʼ and the Fairy Tale of Modernity,” Childrenʼs Literature 32 (2004): 79. 242 The Power of the In-Between clean. For the shoesʼ, the floorʼs and healthʼs sake: use Gislaved’s outdoor shoes.” Per and Lisa’s Christmas Kitchen, Cooperative Union (1935)3 In the opening scene of Per and Lisa’s Christmas Kitchen (Per och Lisas julkök, 1935) two children wake up in the middle of the night and realize that all the kitchen utensils and food prod­ ucts have come alive (Figure 2). The story consists of a dialogue between the two children and different kinds of products, who proudly describe their qualities and repeatedly mention their trademarks. The book is representative of publications that in­ corporate trademarks and products in the narratives, produced by a range of Swedish companies from the 1920s on. Some of the manufacturers that can be mentioned are candy producers Mazetti and Cloetta; others are the soap company Barnängen, the manufacturer Volvo, or the pharmaceutical company Ferrosan.4 The largest producer of this kind of branded publication was, however, the Cooperative Union. Branded publications were usually free of charge, and some of them were printed in very large editions (up to 250,000 copies) and were often written and illustrated by established authors and 3 Per och Lisas julkök (Stockholm: Kooperativa förbundet, 1935). “Se på oss! Bästa kvalitet—KF­skor— men vi måste säga att det är krämen— KFs skokräm—som vi har att tacka för vårt strålande yttre.” /“Det är nu inte alldeles riktigt,” sa skokrämen. “Jag är blygsamheten själv och rätt skall vara rätt. Inte ens jag skulle kunna hjälpa er så smutsigt som det är ute nu, om ni inte hade använt Gislaveds galoscher och bottiner. Det är deras förtjänst att ni håller Er så fina. För skornas, golvets och hälsans skull: använd Gislaveds ytterskor.” 4 See, e.g.: Bo Beskow, Sagan om den snälla Björnen (Stockholm: Barnängen, 1921); Stinas märkliga födelsedagsresa, unknown author and illustrator (Malmö: Mazetti, 1928); Harry Molin, Sverige runt på 8 dagar – med Örnen: En skildring av vårt lands natur och näringsliv m.m. tillägnad skolungdomen (Stockholm: Cloetta, 1945); Astrid Lindgren and Ingrid Vang Nyman, Pippi Långstrump delar ut solkulor (n.p.: Ferrosan, undat­ ed, most likely 1949); Ville Volvo vinner världen och prinsessan: Modern saga, unknown author and illustrator (Göteborg: Volvo, 1952). For presentation and further discussion of the genre, see Elina Druker, Eva Billow: Bilderbokskonstnär och författare (Göteborg: Makadam, 2014), 167–180. Stages of Consumerism 243 illustrators.5 The stories combine traditional rhymes, fairy tales, and adventure stories with advertising slogans. Product placement was implemented by including different products in the illustra­ tions and by explicitly naming the brands in the text. Many of the books are illustrated with traditional illustration techniques, but quite often photo lithography is used and photographic re­ productions of the products are included in the illustrations, cre­ ating collage­like aesthetics.6 The reader is introduced to a range of anthropomorphized consumer articles like living food items, 5 Elina Druker, “ABC for Father and Mother and Me: Representations of Children as Consumers in the Picturebook of the Interwar Period,” Issues in Early Education 33:4 (2016): 33. 6 Kristin Hallberg, Den svenska bilderboken och modernismens folkhem, (lic. diss., Stockholm University, 1996), 51. Figure 2. Anthropomorphized consumer articles in the children’s picture book Per och Lisas julkök. Unknown illustrator, most likely Marie Walle. Produced by Atelier E.O., Kooperativa förbundet, 1935. Reproduction: Swedish Children’s Literature Institute/Svenska Barnboksinstitutet, Stockholm. License: CC­BY­NC­ND. Location of rights holder for this work has been unsuccessful after a diligent search. Copyright claims to this work are welcomed. 244 The Power of the In-Between talking light bulbs or singing coffee pots. By including the ani­ mated objects as characters in the stories, with their own char­ acteristics, feelings and voices—and quite often as companions to the children—the advertising concept is taken beyond product placement. The Sentient Machine Even the advertising short film Crisp Bread Parade (Knäckebrödsparaden, 1933) depicts animated and lively consumer products with human traits (Figure 3). In this black­ and­white, drawn animated film promoting the Öhman Bread Factory, three packages of crisp bread, accompanied by brisk march music, stride forward. Their faces are shaped with round pieces of crisp bread, and their bodies formed with the bread packages.7 During the song the characters’ bodies are converted 7 Advertising film “Öhmans Spisbrödfabrik – Knäckebrödsparaden” (1933). Music “March of the Björneborgers,” unknown eighteenth­c

In the blackandwhite advertising film from 1938, The Pastille Dance (Pastilldansen) by Marabou, it is the commodities that take center stage (Figure 1).In the film, the product is used to form the bodies of a female and male figure, which are con structed with round, white and black cough pastilles "Tenor" and "Figaro."The film depicts the inanimate products as dynamic and vivacious.They court each other, dance, whirl, and sing together, accompanied by jazz music.The short sixtysecond film then con cludes with a voiceover that informs the audience of the popu larity and price of the products (10 öre) while the trademarks and the candy boxes are carefully presented in a final shot. 1 The film is one of many examples of 35 mm blackandwhite advertising short films from the interwar era, shown in movie theatres prior to the main film, and most likely aimed at both children and adults.The motif of the anthropomorphic figures, as well as the dual target audience of the film, points at inter esting connections to children's literature, where anthropomor phized characters and animals are a wellestablished motif from 1 Advertising short film Pastilldansen by Marabou 35 mm (length 1.37:1) blackandwhite film, optic mono (1938).Available at the Film Archive of the Swedish Film Institute and National Library of Sweden, accessed April 10, 2017, http://www.filmarkivet.se/movies/maraboupastilldansen/.ancient fables to modernday stuffed bears, toy rabbits, and dolls.However, the choice of using the products as the main characters in The Pastille Dance seems to reflect a general change of attitude in relation to how the emerging product world is demonstrated in advertising, literature, and art.This change is expressed through an increased fascination with sentient machines, mechanical bod ies, and hybrids between human and machine.A similar interest is conveyed even in children's books.As Nathalie op de Beeck notes in her study of the modernist picture book, "independentminded machines became a trendy topic in children's literature in the late 1920s and 1930s."2In this chapter, I will discuss how the motif of the sentient product is used in early advertising aimed to children.I will study socalled branded picture books published for children in the 1930s and 1940s as well as contemporary advertising short films, with a slightly ambiguous target group.In my discussion, I will apply Jean Baudrillard's theories about advertising and mass media and Nathalie op de Beeck's research on children's literature of the interwar era, pointing at connections to both the avant garde and mass culture.My aim is to study how different kinds of media that address both adults and children during this time period were constructed and to discuss what kind of message was conveyed to the future consumers-children.

Product Placement in Picture Books
"Look at us!We are of the best quality-KFshoes-but we must say that it is the polish-KF's shoe polish-we have to thank for our radiant appearance.""Now that is not quite true," said the shoe polish."I am quite modest, if I must say, and fair's fair.Not even I could have helped you when it is so dirty outside, had you not used Gislaved's galoshes and overshoes.It is thanks to them that you can stay so clean.For the shoesʼ, the floorʼs and healthʼs sake: use Gislaved's outdoor shoes." Per and Lisa's Christmas Kitchen, Cooperative Union (1935) 3 In the opening scene of Per and Lisa's Christmas Kitchen (Per och Lisas julkök, 1935) two children wake up in the middle of the night and realize that all the kitchen utensils and food prod ucts have come alive (Figure 2).The story consists of a dialogue between the two children and different kinds of products, who proudly describe their qualities and repeatedly mention their trademarks.The book is representative of publications that in corporate trademarks and products in the narratives, produced by a range of Swedish companies from the 1920s on.Some of the manufacturers that can be mentioned are candy producers Mazetti and Cloetta; others are the soap company Barnängen, the manufacturer Volvo, or the pharmaceutical company Ferrosan. 4he largest producer of this kind of branded publication was, however, the Cooperative Union.Branded publications were usually free of charge, and some of them were printed in very large editions (up to 250,000 copies) and were often written and illustrated by established authors and illustrators. 5The stories combine traditional rhymes, fairy tales, and adventure stories with advertising slogans.Product placement was implemented by including different products in the illustra tions and by explicitly naming the brands in the text.Many of the books are illustrated with traditional illustration techniques, but quite often photo lithography is used and photographic re productions of the products are included in the illustrations, cre ating collagelike aesthetics. 6The reader is introduced to a range of anthropomorphized consumer articles like living food items, talking light bulbs or singing coffee pots.By including the ani mated objects as characters in the stories, with their own char acteristics, feelings and voices-and quite often as companions to the children-the advertising concept is taken beyond product placement.

The Sentient Machine
Even the advertising short film Crisp Bread Parade (Knäckebrödsparaden, 1933) depicts animated and lively consumer products with human traits (Figure 3).In this black andwhite, drawn animated film promoting the Öhman Bread Factory, three packages of crisp bread, accompanied by brisk march music, stride forward.Their faces are shaped with round pieces of crisp bread, and their bodies formed with the bread packages.from boxes to humanlike bodies before folding down and becoming packages again, with their brand clearly visualized.They show dynamic facial expressions and move to the music with a strong regular rhythm.The tempo matches the pace of the characters, who walk side by side in step, as if marching.
With their gazes aimed toward the audience, they sing: "We are Öhman's crisp bread / from the mountains of Lapland, the hills of Småland, the plains of Skåne / you will find us." 8They also call for other "victorious" crisp breads to step forward.The march music and the vocabulary, with names of Swedish landscapes and expressions like "victorious," strengthen the military feel. 9 The line between the animate and inanimate is called into question in the transformations taking place in both The Pastille Dance and the Crisp Bread Parade.While the products are de picted as lively, dynamic and humanlike, the actual packages and their trademarks are carefully presented to the viewer, to ensure that the merchandise and brand are easily recognizable.As Anna Dahlgren points out in her article about marketing and the visual culture of window displays, brandname pack aged goods were a relatively new medium in retail stores during the 1930s. 10By repeatedly highlighting the package in various ways in different forms of advertising, the consumer was made familiar with the brand.
In the material studied here, the products are also associated with and represent different qualities and connotations.While the bonbons in the Pastille Dance are accompanied by lighthearted jazz music, which provides rhythmic support to their movements, the sturdy crisp breads march to Nordic military music that could be described as patriotic.In both these examples, however, the binary of the human and the machine is constantly explored through humanization of commodities and through bodily transformations.The crisp bread packages' transformations are depicted using machinelike, nonstop, rhythmic movements.Together with the text, they are associated with qualities such as vigor, strength, and resourcefulness.
Even in the branded children's books products are given different features and characteristics, depending on the item for consumption.While cleaning products and shoe polish remind the reader of the importance of hygiene and cleanliness, it is the exotic origins of items like coffee or cacao that are empha sized.The scent of Mazetti's popular Ögoncacao is described as "tropical loveliness" and the taste of Indian Blend tea by the Cooperative Union is said to originate "from the wonderful gardens of the orient." 11ven the short film The Ideal Baking Powder (Marabou bakpulver -den idealiska burken), by Marabou (1945) emphasizes machinelike but dynamic movements (Figure 4).The blackand white stop motion film depicts three jars of baking powder, with arms and feet.The audience is first presented with two older products and then with a more recent version of the same brand.The new product greets his older relatives: Hello guys!Today, I am looking so fine that you should tip your hats to me.But since your hats are so hard to get off, you don't have to bother.Instead, I would like to bow to the audience and in troduce my new bayonet mount, which opens instantly.It prevents spillage and protects against moisture.An ideal jar for the ideal baking powder. 12e new jar steps forward and bows to the audience, lifting his hat/lid and presenting the new lid with its enhanced fastening mechanism.Unlike the pastilles and the crisp bread, it is not the merchandise itself-baking powder-but its advanced packaging to which attention is called.Behind the three main characters, other jars of the same brand are depicted, engaged in a rotat ing, enthusiastic dance accompanied by accordion music in the French café style.They are less anthropomorphic and are depicted 12 Advertising film "Marabou bakpulver -den idealiska burken," (1945) without arms and legs.In the dialogue between the characters, the juxtaposition of old and new technologies and products is empha sized, demonstrated through the meeting of the older generation and the younger, but also through the energetic movements of the dancing products and the highlighting of new technologies, represented by the novel, improved product packaging.While one of the older baking powder jars mentions that he has recently pro vided baking powder for a sponge cake (spilling some due to his old fashioned lid), it is noteworthy that even here, human beings are excluded entirely and the focus lies on the commodities and their interactions with each other.An interesting characteristic in the advertising films is that the characters perform their number as actors on a stage, as if there is a live audience watching.They look directly into the camera, present themselves and the merchandise they are representing, and describe the product and its benefits.The stagelike compo sition can be compared to contemporary ideas about marketing and window displays.The idea of the window display as a stage was widespread during the 1920s and 1930s, shop windows were designed in a more theatrical way, with dramatic lighting that drew attention to the display, and products arranged in a narra tive where they play their specific roles. 13his kind of use of stagelike compositions is also connected to the choice of music in the advertising films.The music is not in any way related to the products in the studied examples, but is used to convey different associations.A sense of temporariness, trendiness, and lightheartedness is created when using French café style music or jazz music, and a feeling of sturdiness and robust ness is generated through march music.In his study about brand ing, Kevin Keller emphasizes the choice of music as a crucial part of the mental concepts or "imagery" associated with brands and brand marketing. 14In the case of these early advertising films the 13 See, e.g., Louise Nilsson, Färger, former, ljus: Svensk reklam och  reklampsykologi, 1900-1930 (PhD Diss., Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2010), 142-147.Dahlgren, "Butiken som ansikte," 147. 14Kevin Lane Keller, Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring,  and Managing Brand Equity (New York City: Pearson, 2013).See also use of music is connected to popular culture, to dance troupes and films.Studying advertising jingles, David Huron proposes that use of music in advertising can serve the overall promotional goal in several capacities, to target a wanted demographical audience, to enhance an ad's credibility and to create memorability, to mention some of the most central objectives. 15According to Huron, one of the most significant capacities is, however, the entertainment value of music.Advertising that is experienced as entertaining and engaging is seen as the most straightforward way of achieving the audience's attention. 16Associations with contemporary pop ular music, with music industry, dance troupes, and musicals in the advertising films can thus be seen as attempts to create an imagery that links the product with innovation and trendiness, but also with a sense of entertainment, even though the marketed commodities are everyday items like cough pastilles or baking products.
The interest in the modernist's fetishized thing, already intro duced in avantgarde cinema and photography, is apparent in both the advertising short films and the branded picture books.They represent a mixture of the real-everyday products-and the fantastic.Aesthetically, several of the films demonstrate the influ ence of contemporary, experimental film.In fact, the rotating and swirling images, repetitive movements, quick cuts, and dramatic graphic forms are reminiscent of the experimental Dadaist and Surrealist cinema of the 1920s, which frequently use rhythmic, machinelike effects and movements. 17Both The Pastille Dance and a following short film by the same company, Tenor & Figaro from 1939, play with the figurative and abstract, employing geo metric figures in motion, organized into twodimensional forms Nicolai Jørgensgaard Graakjaer, "The Bonding of a Band and a Brand: On Music Placement in Television Commercials from a Text Analytical Perspective," Journal of Popular Music and Society, vol.37, issue 5 (2014): 517-537. 15David Huron, "Music in Advertising: An Analytic Paradigm," Musical Quarterly, vol.73, no. 4 (1989): 557-574. 16Huron, "Music in Advertising," 562. 17See, e.g., Malcolm Turvey, The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-garde Film of the 1920s (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).and patterns.In the latter film, the product is not used to form anthropomorphic figures, but, instead, the film plays with the spatial illusionism that derives from the dynamic interplay of contrasting round forms in black and white, formed by the pastilles.This means of expression bears a resemblance with Hans Richter's abstract films from the early 1920s or Oskar Fischinger's abstract colour film Optical Poem (1938), where colourful circles move rhythmically across the screen.It appears that these early advertising films borrowed stylistic expressions and narrative techniques from both the avantgarde experimental films and the buoyant, rapidly growing massmarket entertainment.This kind of influence of the avantgarde can be seen in all fields of massmedia advertising.Inspired by both fu turist and constructivist aesthetics, arrangements with consumer articles were used to form strongly stylized shapes like circles, arcs, squares, and semicircles in both posters and window dis plays. 18Even the functionalist ideas often emphasized repetition and machinelike aesthetics.In her description of the Cooperative Movement exhibition Without Borders in 1957, Helena Mattsson writes that using a repetitive technique of presentation of the ex hibited products "was a way to deemphasise the uniqueness of each item, and to highlight their communal quality." 19The method of repetition of identical, massproduced products is applied in a similar manner in the advertising short films, where the goods are used to create ornamental, rhythmic compositions.Another parallel, which is probably most obvious in The Pastille Dance, is found in the music and dance industry during the 1930s and 1940s, with its hugely popular dance troupes and dance films.Even here, a fascination for figures in motion is essential, with dancers, singers, or even synchronized swimmers forming rotat ing, rhythmic arrangements and geometric figures.
How, then, should we evaluate the transmediations and aes thetic experiments taking place in these advertising short films?
According to Jean Baudrillard, advertising, marketing strategies, mass media and culture, as well as the increasing proliferation of products during this era, multiplied the quantity of signs and spectacles, and created a proliferation of signvalue.Products cannot consequently merely be characterized by their usevalue and exchange value, but also by their signvalue. 20The term thus describes the value given to an object because of what it com municates, rather than the material value and function derived from the use of the object.For example, the advertising film The Ideal Baking Powder not only promotes baking powder, but the product also signifies knowledge of new, modern kitchen equip ment and consumer articles and, in general, a modern, uptodate lifestyle.
At the beginning of the previous century, both the magazine and advertising industries were quick to borrow visual manner isms from modernist art movements such as Art Nouveau or Art Deco, and later, from avantgarde movements such as Surrealism.Innovative style, speed and energy, as well as associations with new techniques and media, are an important part of the "imag ery," to use Kelly's term, that is associated with the products.This means that products like baking powder or cough pastilles are promoted using mental concepts that are associated with conno tations outside the product's function.The kind of stylistic im itation that is expressed in advertising could be described as a marketdriven aesthetics that makes use of associations with the avantgarde-its innovation and novelty as a signvalue-and transfers these associations to the product.

Designing Consumers
Both the advertising books and the advertising short films demon strate an interesting and dynamic meeting of commercial enter tainment and artistic innovation, of oppositional and marginalized strands of art, advertisement, and culture.On one hand, repeating certain products and trademarks in different forms of advertising for children, the child-a future consumer-is made familiar with certain brands and trademarks.On the other hand, seen in the context of children's culture and literature, the mixedmedia aes thetics applied in the commercial books, as well as the focus on machines and anthropomorphic consumer articles, means that new motifs were introduced to children.The expressions and the narrative techniques used in children's literature during this time were thus broadened.
The sentient product, both in the children's books and in the ad vertising films, offers an early example of media crossover.In both these cases, objects obtain a voice and an independent agencyeven though they are at the same time depicted as massmarket commodities, produced in large quantities, and identical to other similar products.The motif with the animated, sentient consumer item reflects a general commercialization of children's daily life in the Western world that took place during the first four decades of the twentieth century, as shown by previous researchers like Viviane Zelizer or Daniel Thomas Cook. 21The development is similar in Sweden, where children were increasingly often treated as consumers in different forms of advertisement starting in the 1930s. 22This coincides with a time period in Sweden where the consumer became of central concern in a wider design discourse. 23oth governmental and private actors began gradually creating consumer policies and marketing strategies in order to construct a welfare state consumer.
The idea that children's culture and literature bears ideological traces of the culture that produces them is possibly selfevident.As Nathalie op de Beeck writes in her study of the American picture book of the interwar period, Suspended Animation: Children's Picture Books and the Fairy Tale of Modernity, "[t]he picture book developed at a time when avantgarde art movements, sociopolitical climates, and changing technologies called for shifts in perceptions." 24In her study, Op de Beeck points briefly at connections between the development of the animated film and children's literature, although she doesn't discuss advertising aimed at children.She argues that while the moving images of a film and the sequential still images in a picture book "stand in different relations to time" (since the reading of a picture book is a process that can be halted, hastened, or even reversed), the early animation and picture books share similar subject matters and are strongly based on a sequentiality. 25Both animation and children's books from the interwar era also share a fascination with the mechanized body, as Op de Beeck suggests.
How should we then understand the lively, anthropomorphic products appearing in both the advertising books for children and in the short films?It is quite clear that new motifs are introduced to the child audience in the studied corpus, motifs that to some extent differ from children's literature published via traditional publishing houses.While the majority of children's literature during the interwar era still expresses strong interest in idyllic settings and fairy tales, many of the branded picture books por tray new technologies through a general affirmation of speed and movement, modern means of transportation, urban environments, and technical innovations. 26The children are depicted traveling to other countries, communicating with sentient machines, flying airplanes or even space ships.The publications with embedded marketing express a general optimism and confidence in the child's capacity to cope with the urban consumer society and its new technologies and media.
Apart from the commercial objectives expressed in the studied material, the motif of the sentient commodity can be seen as a way of addressing the urban child's increasing alienation from the means of production, instead placing the child as a consumer and an actor in a massmarket society.The fundamental changes taking place in the society meant that machines and commercially manufactured things were now becoming an increasingly import ant part of people's lives, including children.Personifying the ma chines and products can be seen as a way of establishing positive relationships between children and the changes shaped by such items and devices.Taking part in consumer information and ad vertisement, recognizing and relating to consumer articles, as well as responsible consumer behavior were seen as qualities that the modern child had to acquire.The branded picture books can thus be seen as a way to prepare children for future life in a consumer society.
Some of the branded books published for children also de scribed how and where the articles were produced and include illustrations of the manufacturing plants in the stories.This is the case in, for instance, Stina's Peculiar Birthday Journey (Stinas märkliga födelsedagsresa, 1928), which describes how cocoa is produced and transported to Sweden. 27The illustrations in this simple book can be described as conventional, but the concept of describing the manufacturing and transport of the product in sto ries for children can be seen in relation to "factual books" or "pro duction books," which describe modern industry and technology in the young reader's modern context. 28These notions are consis tent with some of the ideas about "modern" children's books that emerge during the 1920s in America, Europe and Soviet Russia.An influential work in this context is Lucy Sprague Mitchell's  Here and Now Story Book (1921), in which the author applies a "here and now" methodology.This involves children learning about the world by studying their surrounding reality, especially modern technical things, machines, and urban life. 29Op de Beeck describes the tendency as follows: "Children were to be armed with practical understandings of the modern world so that they might become active engineers of the future, as opposed to pas sive victims of industry."30This would mean that even advertising aimed at children could be seen as a way to offer practical under standing of the modern world and the consumer society and thus change the child audience's awareness of themselves.
In a Swedish context it is also significant that the most com prehensive and largescale marketing strategy targeting the child audience was that of the Cooperative Union, which for several decades was a significant actor in the Swedish commercial and political landscape.The organization had a vast influence on con sumer policies but also on marketing, design, and advertising, and became an important participant in the development of the Swedish welfare state. 31Through its advertising agency Svea, the Cooperative Union developed marketing techniques that com bined advertising, design, art, film, and different informational campaigns. 32Even here, the idea of repetitive marketing in differ ent forms of advertising and media is seen as the most effective strategy.
How, then, are ideas of modernity, welfare ideology, and early consumerism connected in the studied material?According to Baudrillard, rather than promoting a specific product with the purpose of selling, advertising promotes the entire social system.In other words, advertising could be considered more as a way of signifying a way of life than an economic practice."The fun damental, unconscious, and automatic choice of the consumer is to accept the lifestyle of a particular society (no longer is there a real choice: the theory of the autonomy and sovereignty of the consumer is thus refuted)," Baudrillard states in "Consumer Society." 33He argues that rather than focusing on the functional properties of the advertised goods, advertising articulates their emotional or symbolic properties, thereby unleashing an endless process of consumption that has lost its connection to exchange and only reflects a symbolic system which classifies goods into different categories.Applying Baudrillard's interpretation of the idea of the spectacle, Op de Beeck claims that the picture book of the interwar era "signals a change in reading subjects' awareness of themselves as spectators and as parts of the grand modern spec tacle." 34The advertising books and short films can thus be seen as two examples among many types of stories and images that were used in an attempt to reach the child consumer and, furthermore, with the goal of creating modern, competent consumer subjects who could function in the emerging welfare society.

Conclusion
In this chapter I have studied advertising that targets children and adolescents and demonstrates some of the wideranging changes taking place in Sweden during the first half of the twentieth century.Both the short advertising films and the branded publications for children are part of new commercial platforms that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century.The occurrence of speaking, singing, and dancing anthropomorphic products in the studied corpus points at a shift during this era where children were viewed to an increasing degree as future members of the society but also as consumers.The sentient prod ucts presented in the material were used to attract both child and adult consumers and to create brand awareness among them, but they can also be seen as a way of addressing a general, increas ing interaction between children, different commodities, and the consumer society.
It is apparent that already during the 1930s the advertising industry is intentionally and strategically using different fields of marketing and various media, even when targeting the child 33 Baudrillard, Selected Writings, 37. 34 Op de Beeck, Suspended Animation, 162.consumer.Consumption is described as an essential part of the modern, urban experience and children are included here as both competent child consumers and as implied future (grownup) con sumers.The same products, and their brandnamed packages, are presented in a range of media, from posters and window displays to short films and picture books for children.What we see is a network of media where advertising that targets children is con stantly formed in connection to children's culture, media, consum erism, and art, a system of relations that swings between high arts, avantgarde, and mass culture.
When describing the quickly developing commercial market during the interwar era in Sweden, relations between media become not only illustrative but fundamental for the media historical changes taking place.The networks of influences and stimuli between different media also raises theoretical and methodological questions about the study of children's literature and culture and stresses the fruitfulness of taking a larger mediahis torical context in to consideration when studying media or litera ture targeted to children.Transmediation, in this case understood as movement of products, subject matters, and aesthetic strategies between different media, is central in the allembracing marketing strategies applied.The depictions of the sentient products in the studied material are characterized by energetic and lively movement as well as innovative, rhythmic visual effects.The commodities convey a general sense of innovation and modernity but are also described with humanlike behavior and emotions; they take center stage, not only in the advertisements, but in the modern consumer society in general.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Anthropomorphized consumer articles in the children's picture book Per och Lisas julkök.Unknown illustrator, most likely Marie Walle.Produced by Atelier E.O., Kooperativa förbundet, 1935.Reproduction: Swedish Children's Literature Institute/Svenska Barnboksinstitutet, Stockholm.License: CCBYNCND.Location of rights holder for this work has been unsuccessful after a diligent search.Copyright claims to this work are welcomed.