Inside the yellow cardboard face of SpongeBob Squarepants are samples of tampons, Ramen noodles and condoms.
The Nickelodeon cartoon sponge grins from the front of hundreds of trial packs passed out by campus bookstores during Welcome Week.
"It was attention grabbing," no-preference freshman Sarah Baker said. "I thought it was cute."
Baker said she didn't feel it was a problem that SpongeBob Squarepants graced the cover of the pack, which held mostly adult-oriented items.
"It's given to college students," she said. "I can understand why it'd be a problem if it were given to kids, but it wasn't. We're mature enough to handle it."
The trial packs, 2.4 million of which were distributed across the country, are intended for college students, said Derek White, executive vice president of Alloy Inc., the parent company of 360 Youth Inc., which distributes the boxes.
White said the use of SpongeBob Squarepants' picture is often targeted toward college students, who make up 25 percent of the cartoon's audience.
"SpongeBob is actually targeted to two entirely different demographic groups," he said. "That presents no issues so long as this box is not being distributed to kids."
The packs are featuring a warning notice on both sides of the box - the first time this has ever happened, said Mike Wylie, assistant manager to the Student Book Store, 421 E. Grand River Ave., which distributed some of the trial packs.
"We are asked if we want condoms to be in the box, and we always say 'yes,'" Wylie said, who added there are other things in the trial pack that parents may not want their children to have access to, such as adult doses of cold medicine.
Wylie said it is rare to receive concerns from people about the packs and their cover designs, saying he has had only one phone call in six years. If a child wants a box, he explains to the parents the intentions of the trial packs, Wylie said.
Zoology sophomore Mary Leyrer said she has a trial pack in her dorm room, but thought using a cartoon character to advertise items clearly intended for older students was strange.
"They're trying to promote safe sex, but with SpongeBob?" Leyrer said.
The inclusion of a cartoon character on the box is a clever advertising technique, advertising Professor Bruce Vanden Bergh said.
"You want it to communicate fast, so you want to think of something visual that will get that across really fast," Vanden Bergh said. "SpongeBob will do that."
