I have to confess that I watch so little TV that the one example I came across of a children's literature theme in the TV media was almost twenty years old -- from a recorded episode of "The Wonder Years" that aired in 1989. The commercial, for Huggies diapers, featured Sleeping Beauty, a two-year old who had been asleep in her royal crib for about a hundred years and was finally woken by the arrival of Prince Charming, a two-year old boy bearing the gift of Huggies leak-proof diapers. Apparently, in bringing Sleeping Beauty the diapers, Prince Charming fulfilled the girl's ideal of happiness.
I was a bit skeptical about how a girl with a leaking diaper would have been able to sleep through the night, much less for a hundred years, but the tongue-in-cheek message of the ad was clear: life begins (again) when a girl meets the prince who can rescue her from adversity, and the prince in such cases is well-advised to consult commercial sources in the pursuit of material, and romantic, success.
It would be interesting to compare the commercials of that era with modern commercials, but I just don't watch any prime time TV, and CNN and MSNBC don't seem to run commercials with kiddie lit themes. Looking at the reports of my peers, however, it seems, that princess themes are alive and well, but also counterbalanced in some instances by edgier messages that deconstruct or at least pull at the edges of the traditional themes.
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