This article originally appeared on PSFK.com.
Competition? Mergers? Supply and demand? Find our what's cooking at the Food Court. These are the kind of directions you'll find as you make your way through the Saturday Morning Cartoons style website You Are Here, created by the Federal Trade Commission to teach kids how marketing and advertising are influencing the way they shop.
On the site, excuse me, "in the mall", kids can create their own ads for shoes, hear directly from the cartoon doctor who endorses the vitamins at a nutritional emporium, and find out what happens when small retailers get bought up by bigger corporations. What's most surprising is how advanced and direct most of the lessons are, as well as the lack of any overt bias. Says one purple Fraggle-like character, "this site was created to teach kids how to be smarter consumers. The Federal Trade commission wanted to provide a fun way for kids to learn some pretty important things about the marketplace, and what a better place to learn than here at the mall?" To learn more about the project and the FTC's role in it, please visit PSFK.com.
Read more articles by Scott at PSFK.com.