All merchandise is commercial. Do your kids wear a Nike swoosh t shirt? Okay on an iPad? Love Lego? What the difference if it's a Microsoft football or new relic slingshot (all things I see from where I'm sitting)?

1) It’s not as bad if the logo or name is at least the manufacturer of the object. There’s an argument to be made that it’s a form of standing behind your product: this is good enough that we don’t think you’ll come to think ill of us.

2) Some of us in fact do avoid wearing logos. Nicer (and not even that nice, necessarily) clothes, bags, shoes, et c. tend not to have them, or at least make them very small. Logos for something other than the company that made the item would be even worse. Large logos and legible clothing more generally signal things I’d prefer not to signal, so… I don’t. Freebies in that category get worn around the house or as a base layer.

>Some of us in fact do avoid wearing logos.

That's me

That's one of the reasons I don't buy Nike and I cover up Apple logos with stickers (which is easier ever since they stopped putting a damn backing light on their laptop logos). I'm not going to advertise for you for free.

I have a few Lego minifigures branded with a (since merged away) corporate logo.

Branded Lego is probably the most durable chotchki you’re going to find.

Yep, LEGO endures. I've done entire branded boxes filled with a custom instruction booklet, such as "build this diorama of our video game studio" or "this is a character from our upcoming game" or "it's a LEGO GameBoy with our game on the screen." And it has to be LEGO. Anything else is considered cheap and reflects on your company.

The top-tier of this, of course, is to have LEGO make a special set and color for you, like the Maersk promotion sets: https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Maersk

(Now it's kind of boring because they sell them online, before those were exceptionally rare as they were basically only sold directly to Maersk.)

All merchandise is commercial, but not all commercial merchandise comes with conspicuous ads printed on.

There are many toys without a fat big logo of the Manufacturer on them.

Less so than kids at school wearing apparel with very prominent branding. At least, people usually don't pay for commercial merch.

There's an entire fashion style that leans heavily on oversized logos, logomania

Streetwear is weird

I used to get all sorts of medically-branded pens and merchandise courtesy of my parents. I had an infinite supply of pens.

Years later, I was working as a nurse on a medical floor. I had a realization that I was filling out an IV med label for Avelox with an Avelox-branded pen.

Memories: Being in sixth grade and wondering why the teacher thought it was odd that I was using pencils with "Diazepam HCl" on them.

This dutch web shop selling mostly printer ink includes very nice ballpoint pens with their branding in the packages. End-result: Those pens get used by news readers and youtubers all over the place.

Whats wrong with that? Kids play with anything, wooden stick is a great toy anytime for example. That there are some logos and not some other logos or pictures they couldn't care less about

whats the difference between merch logos and regular toy brand for the kid? they dont care. as a parent i also dont realy care if they having fun.

> whats the difference between merch logos and regular toy brand for the kid?

On top of that, some children's shows are clearly tailored to push toys and all kinds of things, hoping to create a feedback loop of demand for swag-adjacent gear.

Mom's a nurse, so we grew up with about everything in the house being branded drug merch. The diflucan dolphin beanie toy is probably my favorite. As an adult, I wish she had brought home Viagra swag. They gave out some hilarious stuff.