Mead School Supplies

If anything can make kids turn off the TV set, it’s a back-to-school commercial. What topic could be more offensive to them as summer vacation winds down? In promoting its Five Star line of notebooks and other scholarly paraphernalia, Mead finesses this difficulty in an ingenious way: It pretends to be introducing line extensions in which Five Star notebooks and whatnot are used as running shoes, drums, bike helmets and catcher’s mitts. As you’d guess, these crackpot ideas have telegenically awful results.