By Perfesser Cosmo Fishhawk, Published: Monday, May. 14th, 2012

Grandpa used to say, “youth is the most easily cured disease in the world… you just wait.”

While baby boomers remain a huge demographic, the folks whose job it is to sell things to people have noticed that the boomers aren’t idiots - a statement that couldn’t have been made about them when they were younger. 60’s activist and recovering hippie, Randall Bowlton, pointed out, ”I used to forget where I hid my stash, now I can’t remember where I put my teeth.”

So the boomers got older, allegedly acquired some sense, and became less inviting targets to marketers. Now you still do see some products being specifically targeted to oldsters….sexy adult diapers? Eek, gag, yecch! Condo in Boca? But a lot of products that boomers had traditionally thought were being marketed to them are now being sold to people who hadn’t yet been conceived when the boomers hit middle age.

Movies are the most obvious example. If you look at the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 films of all time, the vast majority of them are oriented towards an adult audience. If you turn on your TV or open a newspaper today, you’ll see the advertisements are for films based on childrens' toys and comic books, not exactly adult fare. So if you see a boomer at a theater purchasing a ticket for a TRANSFORMERS movie, you’d better make a call. Someone’s wandered away from the “home” in search of an early bird special and is about to get even more confused and could possibly have a flashback to the time he took acid and went to see The Exorcist.”

PLAYBOY magazine used to have a couple pages of book reviews and a couple pages of movie reviews that were interesting to people who had more in mind than T and A. Now it has one paragraph of each and several pages of video game reviews. The other stuff remains the same, but we know their target audience is too young to legally purchase the magazine.

Now Miller Lite beer seems to be putting a full court press on the frat crowd. You know what college kids do with beer… they pour it into themselves as quickly as possible and they’ve invented ingenious delivery systems to do so. The Miller people have produced a lid for their can that is so soft it can be punctured by anything more substantial than a piece of overcooked linguini, thus venting the can in such a way as to allow the fluid to flow into the consumer with speed rivaling the velocity it reaches when it comes back up.

You go Miller Lite!