"We're Being Watched"

For decades one of the special delights of childhood has been to hack the tops off cereal cartons, stuff them into an envelope, pound on a stamp, and send away the lumpy packet. The boxtops, plus a coin or two, eventually elicit a "prize." The agony of the wait is exquisite, and the day some ticky-tack gadget arrives can be a private little Christmas.

Now Lewis Engman, the earnest chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, has proposed a ban on TV advertising that entices kids to send in for notions. Engman worries that such a sales pitch is unfair to children in part because it capitalizes "upon their propensity to confuse reality and fantasy."

O.K., but interchanging reality and fantasy must surely be one of the fundamental rights of childhood. Perhaps the explanation is that at 38, Engman is too young to remember the golden age of radio during the '30s when a whole generation of Americans grew up sending away for Little Orphan Annie's secret-society badges, Tom Mix's fabulous "mirror ring" (without turning his head, the wearer could see if he was being tracked), and Jack Armstrong's whistle ring, which sounded like a tiny siren and came with its own secret code.

If Engman had made his speech during the '30s, kids all over the country would have consulted their Jack Armstrong code books and then sent out the appropriate warning of four short blasts. The meaning: "We're being watched."

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