Hooked on Phonics
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Hooked on Phonics is a phonics program for children's literacy developed in the late 1980s and first marketed widely in the 1990s.
The program integrates a wide variety of media, including computer games, music, and flash cards in addition to books in its materials.
The product along with its catchphrase, "Hooked on Phonics worked for me!" (spoken by happy children in the product's television ads), became widely recognized during the mid-1990s. The phrase was used widely in pop culture to make pejorative tongue-in-cheek jokes about not being able to read or for making incidental reading errors. Modifications (typically phonetic misspellings) to the catchphrase also abound for both comic as well as promotional purposes.
The developer of the program, Gateway Learning Corporation, based in Santa Ana, California used the success of Hooked on Phonics to develop new educational aids such as Hooked on Math and Hooked on School Success.
History
On July 6 2004, the Federal Trade Commission revealed that Gateway Learning Corporation had been selling its customer list to telemarketers. Although the company's website stated that it "would not sell personal information such as phone numbers and children's ages to marketers without customer permission", since April 2003 the company has been renting its 32,000-member customer list to interested parties.
External links
- Hooked on Phonics website (http://www.hop.com)