So You Think You Can Raise a Brand-Free Kid?

It's not easy. Brands are everywhere -- literally.

Disney 24/7

Genevieve McMahon says she experienced an "eye-opening" moment the first time she bought disposable diapers for her newborn daughter Imogen, who was then too small for the cloth variety her parents preferred.

"We were unpacking them to put them in her drawer and realized there were Walt Disney Winnie the Pooh characters all over them," she says.

Exactly. In her book Buy Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds, Susan Gregory Thomas explores the widespread and controversial phenomenon of using spokes-characters in advertising to young children.

Licensed characters are huge moneymakers for companies. In 2005, Winnie the Pooh earned Disney $6.2 billion in retail sales, according to Gregory Thomas, second only to the mouse.