Uh, are the authors of this book aware that bitters are nearly 90 proof?
Probably. In the drink pictured, you’d be getting ~1ml of Ethanol in a 235ml drink or a bit less than 0.5% ABV. That strength of drink would be legal to sell to minors in many parts of the world, including the USA.
There are plenty of non alcoholic bitters available at liquor stores around here (San Francisco) that use glycerin as the base.
I may or may not approve of teaching kids to drink cocktails, but damn that is some awesome graphic design!
I definitely do not approve of teaching kids to drink cocktails, but I agree on the graphic design!
Finally, something my kids can drink with their candy cigarettes!
Dave Foley in Girl Drink Drunk
That book is all kinds of awesome, I love it. I’ve never had any great desire to drink alcoholic beverages but I love fun, colorful drinks and I think that most kids would really like these too. I don’t really see it as a gateway to the hard stuff myself 
I may or may not agree with you.
(How is that for conflict avoidance?)
If you have personally had bad experiences in your life with alcohol or know someone who has, or you are embroiled in the culture of drinking or know people who are, or have seen tragedy caused by a drunk driver then I understand that from your perspective you might or might not see it as a touchy issue.
It seems that some countries and cultures are more prone to alcohol abuse than others. I didn’t witness the drunken foolishness exhibited by stereotypical US frat boys when I lived in Europe and Asia - though I’m sure there are people everywhere who have drinking problems.
I’m not condoning starting kids out on watered down adult drinks, but I’ve never needed alcohol in the mix to have fun at a party or enjoy paper umbrellas or tiki mugs or swizzle sticks and brightly-colored drinks. I have made it to my mid-fifties with only ever having consumed a couple of dozen alcoholic beverages in my life at the very most, and none at all in recent years.
Maybe I’m just thinking of tropical tiki bar drinks and other dramatically fun and colorful fare. I think kids would love that. I wouldn’t see the point of serving kids something that looks exactly like scotch on the rocks or Manhattans or whatever it is that people drink too much of and ruin their lives with. I wouldn’t serve them ginger ale out of actual beer cans or bottles either.
But alcohol has never played any significant role in my life or my family’s, or that of my parents, in-laws or extended family. Maybe it’s more scary to people who have suffered because of alcohol abuse. It’s hard for me to see serving Hawaiian Punch in a tiki mug to a kid as condoning alcohol abuse though.
YMMV
When I was a kid, one of my friends occasionally had small sleep-overs where her mom made us punch using canned frozen cocktail mixers - I think we particularly liked the strawberry daquiri one. She’d add ice and 7-up, then pour it in fancy glasses and garnish with strawberries and limes. We LOVED it - and I’m talking at middle school and early high school age. We got the “special” feeling without needing it to be a “real cocktail.”
(My family started letting me have an occasional glass of wine (like at a holiday dinner) when I was about 14, and so I never felt the urge to get into drinking culture in high school and even didn’t drink for the first couple of years of college.)
Your response is so much more well thought out and nuanced than my (slightly) snarky post deserved. I raise a (possibly non-alcoholic) glass to you!
I was thinking that a colorful-soft-drinks-in-fancy-glasses party might also present an opportunity to bring up the topic of alcohol with kids in a way appropriate to their age and maturity. My own parents treated the subject of drugs and alcohol the same way they did sex - they never discussed it.
There is more than one “talk” that parents need to have with their kids.
oh, and obligatory “The Talk” link - http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/
And I return the toast to you with a tiki mug filled with Hawaiian Punch - a beverage that is like mother’s milk to me, the nectar of my youth and one of the reasons that it’s hard to zip up my jeans sometimes. 
Good talk. Glad we were able to work this out.
That link will go to a new comic when they update on Monday. I assume you wanted to link to the guest comic by Erika Moen?
Those bitters then would be the work of the deity that Satan worships.
Yea, I’m sort of with you on this. I’m all for the fun of making and sharing delicious things with the family. But this reminded me of that cigarette candy people used to pass out at Halloween… turns out the tobacco companies were all for it in the interest of brand imprinting.
