In the new film "Curious George," moviegoers will find their favorite story book chimp cavorting with crates of Dole bananas. The man with the yellow hat races around in a Volkswagen. The Postal Service gets a cameo role via the mailman.

The product placement, while not awful or dangerous, makes this one of the first feature-length animated movies to allow surreptitious advertising aimed at children. For years, Walt Disney Co., Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation have avoided logo-laden products in cartoons, making that form of moviemaking virtually brand-free.

Now, Universal Pictures has stepped gingerly over the line between commerce and inno-cence. (The feat so impressed the advertising industry newsletter Madison+Vine.com that it sent an alert to clients last week.) When a Big Brand slips a subtle "buy me" message into entertainment for kids, the change ought to disturb consumers.

This shift calls for a reaction based on new thinking. What if, instead of leaving the choices to dealmakers, Hollywood went proactive? What if moviemakers reached out for smart, innovative and beautiful products instead of the most profitable deal? By putting merit ahead of profit, they might turn the supposed Bad Guys into purveyors of Good Design.

My attention was piqued by the promise of an animated Volkswagen in the New York- like metropolis, where George's antics unroll. I immediately pictured a bright-yellow New Beetle, one of the acknowledged icons of late 20th-century design.

Close, but no banana. It's a red pickup based on a Touareg concept vehicle.

"It doesn't take up the whole screen," Universal spokesman Paul Pflug assured by phone. "It's very subtle. You see the logo on the tailgate of the truck."

No design heavyweight there — only a piece of Universal's "existing long-term multimillion-dollar relationship" to get VW products in front of viewers. Volkswagen looks at every Universal script, Pflug said.

The payoff would be bigger for kids, though, if designers were looking at those scripts, too. Why not encourage brand awareness based on terrific design? Let companies compete for the privilege of showcasing great products, especially to children, in films in which they would make sense.

A design board of professionals could advise and select by intrinsic merit, not marketing plan. The subliminal aim would be to train young eyes to know, and perhaps to appreciate, artistry in everyday products. With arts education across the country in sad decline, somebody's got to begin to reverse the slide into arts illiteracy. Hollywood is perfectly placed.

Besides, cartoon-perfect de-signs are hard not to find these days, starting with Apple's iPod. There's also the famous Eames "potato chip" chair, which would be a natural for animation, as would almost anything Karim Rashid designs. The wavy plastic Verner Panton chair could immediately supplant those clunky, four-legged wooden school chairs that no one sees anymore.

Over the past decade, savvy corporations have increasingly turned to design to give their products a competitive edge. Contests such as the Industrial Design Excellence Awards and the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards are identifying corporations that produce exceptional products, from Apple to Patagonia.

I would not object if the man with the yellow hat were garbed in Patagonia fleece. Or carried one of Ross Lovegrove's spiraling plastic water bottles for Ty Nant. (Another option: The Madison+ Vine report noted that Dream-Works parodied real brands in "Shark Tale" and "Shrek 2," featuring "Coral-Cola" instead of Coca-Cola and "Farbucks" for a Starbucks reference. TV's "The Simpsons" does the same.)

What makes the design potential more interesting now, too, is the education angle. In conjunction with the movie, Universal is developing an animated preschool series for PBS based on the "Curious George" character.

But could studios be persuaded to go for smarter design?

"It would depend on whether that 'good design' would work with the story and not blurt out, 'Here I am,' " said Pflug, the studio spokesman.

By contrast, Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert — a consumer advocacy group in Portland, Ore., that combats ad creep — cautions against any kind of paid product placement.

"We do suffer from the reign of the ugly," he said, "but more propaganda is not the answer."

On the other hand, if studios went in search of that perfect Eames chair, without payoffs, his alarm bells might not go off.

Ultimately, though, consumers will rule. Pflug describes the Universal branding arrangement as a "value proposition." But before subliminal commerce runs away with the next generation of toddlers, moviegoers should ask themselves: Value to whom?