Kids selling airplanes

Mark Thompson has a Time article about some unusual advertising:

The pitched battle over a shrinking defense budget has crossed a new threshold as Boeing has released a television ad that features two young boys debating the merits of Boeing’s legacy F-18 fighter and Lockheed Martin’s fledgling F-35 aircraft. Boeing would dearly like the Pentagon to buy fewer $160 million F-35s and more $91 million F-18s than currently planned.
The Walton-like kids are sitting on hay bales in Grandpa’s hangar barn when Kid One asks Kid Two: “Hey, what did you do with the ten dollars that Grandpa gave you?”
“This beauty,” Kid Two says, holding up a foot-long F-35 plastic model.
“The new F-35 strike fighter with the super helmet and electronic computer?” Kid 1 asks in wonderment.
“And,” Kid Two adds, “it’s invisible.”
“But it’s right there,” Kid One counters.
Kid Two doesn’t like where this is going. He tries to change the subject: “What did you buy with Grandpa’s ten dollars?”
“Three Boeing F-18 Super Hornets, with all the latest avionics and ten years of full Boeing service support,” Kid One boasts excitedly, as the camera zooms to the barn floor to reveal a miniature maintenance vehicle pulling alongside the planes, and tiny Boeing workers tending to them. [Editor's note: granted, you can not buy three $91 million planes for the same price that you'd pay for a single $160 million plane, but this is advertising, after all. Pentagon advertising.]
“Yea, but your planes are not invisible,” Kid 2 says, nervously tugging at the nose until a piece apparently comes off in his hand.
“Well, okay,” Kid One says. “Wanna have a battle for the skies?”
“No,” Kid Two says, casting his eyes downward. “It broke.”
The 52-second spot (which suggests it won’t actually be broadcast) ends with the words “It’s really not that complicated” on the screen before fading to black.
The US government said in October of 2013 that it was pressing the world’s nations “to ensure that any involvement in child soldiers— any involvement in the recruitment of child soldiers—stop.”
However, in the US, they can apparently be recruited to peddle warplanes. In fact, the noxiousness of using cute youngsters to hype weaponry is almost offset by their very cuteness. The only thing missing is one of the kids saying: “He likes it— Mikey likes it!”

Rico asks what's next: girls doing ads using Barbie dolls to recruit female soldiers?