If you start a petition to pull military toys, let me know. I’ll sign it. Me, I’ve got other windmills to tilt at.
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There’s Breaking Bad action figures!? I didn’t know! They look sweet! I might have to pick some up next time my son and I go to Toy’s R’Us to get more SkyLanders figures.
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The issue is completely centered on the assumption that only children play with or collect toys and, therefore, Toys R Us must only sell toys appropriate for children. Sort of like arguing that Urban Outfitters shouldn’t sell My Little Pony branded items because they are clearly inappropriate for adults.
Anyway… from CNN: Toys R Us has yet to respond to a CNN query. In a statement to WFTX, the toy giant said, "The products you reference are carried in very limited quantities and the product packaging clearly notes that the items are intended for ages 15 and up. Items from this TV series are located in the adult action figure area of our stores.
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If the kids don’t know what they are, then it’s not a problem, is it? And if the kids do know what they are, then that indicates a pre-existing parenting failure that has nothing to do with the toys or toystore.
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Its actually been a long standing thing with them. They seem to have a sizable following with males in their teens and early twenties. Mostly for collectible action figures, video games, Nerf guns and the like. I still remember being really confused when friends and acquaintances would go to midnight launches at Toys R Us in high school and college (this is 10-15 years ago). Often times this was for the release a major video game, but they seemed to be lining up for new figure (especially Star Wars related) releases and exclusive Nerf guns and Lego sets an awful lot. I also had a cousin from Europe who insisted on going to multiple Toys R Uses during a visit to the US to track down an entire line of Metal Gear Solid figures that had not been released by him. Its sort of weird to realize that a corny, strip mall, chain store has an international reputation as the most affordable and reliable place to find this sort of stuff.
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They could at least put a curtain up, to close off the adult section from innocent eyes.
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Oh no, you don’t get to absolve the merchant of any responsibilities they have. We’re all in this together here, and any retailer who primarily markets products for kids and families ought to think twice about including evil murdering bastards.
As another weird thing: I had a couple friends who would pick up temp Holiday sales positions at Toys R Us, use the employee discount to buy all the new Star Wars tchotchkes on the cheap, then quit before the month was out. I think it took a week or so for the discount to kick in so this must be a thing other people do.
It seemed incredibly stupid to me, but the prequels still were coming out. And these guys were big into collecting Star Wars stuff. One of them insisted on buying 3 of everything, especially if it was limited release. 1 to display/futz with and 2 to store in package as “an investment”. I kept telling him that wouldn’t work because there were a million other dudes doing the same, but he just kept buying various forms of Holiday Yoda by the truckload.
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Darth Vader’s body count is somewhere in the billions if you count his role in the Alderaan incident. When was the last time you saw a toy store that didn’t have Vader-themed merchandise?
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Because the big bad in the space western is anything like Walter White. I dismiss your contribution to the discussion entirely as shifting the goalposts.
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You might want to tighten up your rule for which characters should be banned from family-themed retailers, all I’m sayin’. “Evil murdering bastards” are hardly a rare find on toy store shelves.
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I don’t have a rule. I have an objection to Breaking Bad toys being sold in Toys R Us.
Your stated rationale for said objection, then.
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My rationale? It’s in my first post. What’s your rationale for arguing for this product’s inclusion?
I am not sure what the main theme of Breaking bad is/was , but what i got from it was — Its all about surviving .If some series has drugs in it does not mean you can’t learn lesson from it . Also , their are far way too many games with blood and gore in them, compared to a simple toy .
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For those people who wish to pull the Breaking Bad dolls (ahem, sorry, “action figures”) off the Toys ‘R’ Us shelves: Okay, let’s play pretend like little children, as this is what this whole issue revolves around. You hand a Walter White figurine to a 3 to 4-year old kid. Let’s assume you’ve removed any choking hazards from said doll. Now what? What will this child do? Play with it, of course. How will the child play with it? With their imagination, of course. Will this play involve becoming a meth dealer and gunning down rivals? Perhaps, perhaps not. Will the child grow up to be a violent meth dealer based on their play with the Walter White doll? Well, that’s assuming the kid even knows what the hell drug dealing is and what it entails, and somehow knows the plotline for Breaking Bad. But for the sake of YOUR argument, let’s say this kid does know what drug dealing is all about. Will this doll shape this kid’s destiny and attitude toward violence and crime? All I can really speak to is my experience with dolls when I was a wee lad: Star Wars, army men, Battlestar Galactica, Shogun Warriors, Transformers. All of these guys were armed to the teeth. My playtime was a fairly violent affair. Most of my male friends also had a fairly violent playtime as well with these dolls. And the result? Have you connected the dots yet? Are you able to extrapolate the relationship between playtime dolls and real adult violence? Did perhaps the fact my parents eschewed violence, raised me with pacifist values, and did not have a gun in the house a factor? That they made sure I understood the difference between reality and make-believe? I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the experts on how dolls shape a future adult’s personality.
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Ok, so what are you actually arguing here? That these toys (of fictional characters) shouldn’t exist or be sold by stores at all? That they have some corrupting influence on children by dint of merely existing in proximity to children’s toys (or merely existing)? The reality is that Toys-comical backwards ‘R’-Us has sold toys for adults for quite a long time, as adults have become heavy purchasers of “collectable figures.” So if the argument is “toy stores sell toys only for children and this is inappropriate for children” then that’s based on a false premise.
Myself, I find the narrative that they’re based on to be completely and wildly inappropriate for children, but the figures themselves, since they don’t actually represent anything to kids ignorant of that narrative (who will have no interest in them), are inherently no more “evil” than any other gun-toting action figure. And arguably less so than many others aimed at children that, for example, glorify military action, etc. I was far more outraged by the toy line for the original “Robocop” movie explicitly designed and marketed to children - it gave parents the false idea that it was a movie series for kids, and I saw small children being taken to R-rated movies that weren’t remotely appropriate for them as a result. No such confusion is going to arise here.
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Because adult collectors buy toys too, and Toys R Us wants their money, and this toy’s inclusion at Toys R Us isn’t hurting anybody. It’s not like a kid is going to be permanently scarred by seeing an action figure of a 50-year-old man wearing yellow coveralls, or like viewing said action figure is the same thing as viewing the TV series itself.
Why is it inherently more damaging to expose children to the toy on the left than the ones on the right?
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From what I’ve read about the stores, yes, apparently that is now the case.
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