The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has asked the country’s advertising watchdog to examine some online gambling products to determine if they violate rules on products intended to appeal to children.

The UK media has been on an unrelenting anti-gambling tear in recent months and it was apparently the Sunday Times’ turn to bash the bookies this weekend. The Times dutifully turned its outrage knob to ‘11’ by claiming that online gambling products available via Paddy Power, 888 Holdings and Casinoland websites were intended to “lure kids” into real-money gambling activity.

The casino titles involved popular characters like Peter Pan, Jack and the Beanstalk and Moon Princess, which, much like Ringling Brothers’ circuses, can hold appeal for children of all ages, yet the Times decided that the operators in question were deliberately “targeting children” by “exploiting a loophole in the rules that allows them to promote games that appeal to children.”

The UKGC was sufficiently cowed by the Times’ blinkered broadside that it posted an open letter on the UKGC website, insisting that the regulator was “committed to using our powers and expertise to play our part in creating a safer internet.”