Love/Hate relationship with Marketing & calluses on her feet

My husband and I are very conscious about marketing to kids and we try our best to keep Astrid away from it. With that said, my husband also makes his living in advertising/marketing - which is why I describe it as a love/hate relationship.

I mentioned before that 99.9% of the Astrid's kid brand merchandise were gifts from friends, family, and her nanny. (Although she has much less than other kids we know.) That includes her Dora the Explorer shoes that I wrote about here. They so obviously shout out the brand, and every time U. sees me, he asks me to throw them away. The only reason I've yet to get rid of them is that they were a present to Astrid from her nanny, they're brand-new, and they're perfectly fine shoes. Astrid would refer to the characters on her shoes as "the girl, and the monkey" so I thought it was harmless for now (and she'll grow out of them soon anyway). So I held onto them.

But recently she pointed to "the girl" and said, "Dora. Mommy...Dora!" Who let the cat out of the bag and told her? Someone in the babysitting center at the YMCA must have pointed it out to her. (The Y offers 2 hours of free babysitting for members, which allows U. and I to workout at the gym and to take Yoga classes.) So as much as we try to shield her, she's going to find out from other people. Outside influences will only increase when she goes to school, which is one of the reasons we've decided to keep her out of school until she's at least 3 years old.

So onto the 2nd topic of conversation (which is related I promise)- calluses on her feet.

Astrid's crocs (here) have started giving her calluses on the balls of her feet, below the big toe. With the summer heat, beach, and swimming, she's been wearing the crocs everyday. So we decided to switch her back to her sneakers. But now that she shouts "Dora!" every time she sees those shoes, and we don't want our kid to be a walking advertisement for the brand, I'm getting rid of those shoes. (Not throwing them out, but giving them away.) Plus those shoes have started to give her calluses on the inside of her heal. (What's up with shoes giving Astrid calluses all of a sudden?) I've switched them out with other sneakers we have from Oshkosh that just have flowers on the side.