Slashdot Mirror
Dirty Dozen- The Most Dangerous Toys of 2001
An anonymous reader pointed us to The Dirty Dozen
which lists the most dangerous toys for children. #1 on the list is Metal Gear Solid 2 (which I finished this weekend and highly recommend)
Also making the cut are Gundam and Dragonball Zaction figures (nothing scarier then Bulma on a bad hair day I guess), Super Street Fighter II and Doom. Of course the specific version of doom they classify as one of the most dangerous toys of 2001 is the Game Boy Advanced port, and I gotta agree with them on the GBA thing, those things are dangerous. Play for more then 30 minutes, and you go blind.
They're arguable trying. Here's a link to their testimony to Congress. They're apparently trying to get Congressional support so that action figure tie-ins from M-rated video games don't get marketed to children.
They've gone from "inform" to "lobby", in my opinion.
Somewhere I have a picture of (I believe) the police chief of Chicago back in the fifties watching as his mayor takes a sledge hammer to a pinball machine. For Slashdot readers too young to have seen one, a pinball machine was a mechanical device involving a steel ball, some solenoid actuated bumpers, a couple of electro-mechanical paddles and lots of gaudy paint. It was a photo op for the city's campaign to rid themselves of this corrupting and desensitizing influence. Since the city had just finished collecting and destroying ten large numbers of machines taken from independant operators, they most certainly felt just as strongly about pinball's influence as you do about violence/porn/horror.
And whether or not you think shielding kids from violence is right or wrong, it's NOT your decision. It's the parent's decision. This web site simply lets parents share their finds. If I was Jane Clueless I might not know that Shadow Cat wasn't just another K'nex toy, but I might want to know that it fires missiles.
Something else for you breeding types to consider is that kids do take notice of their parents approvals and disapprovals. If Mom & Dad consistently say "No" to violent games, Junior does pick up on that. He may rebel and go seek those violent games out on his own, but that's part of growing up too. Deep down, though, he does learn that mom considers violence wrong. What he chooses to do with that knowledge makes him his own individual.
All in all, it's just another "Move along, nothing to see here" kind of story, (other than a kind of cool shopping list.)
John
John
I'm not, but I won't flame you. Please, no one else flame for so crazy a reason.
Exactly. If half the effort these people spent on web page design was put into teching kids about ethics and the consequences of their actions, the world would be a happier place.
Political correctness can often be incorrect in reality. I have played various first-person shooters, often deathmatches with my cousins, and it is just fun, not turning me into a psychopath. If anything it causes more friendship because we entertain each other with our funniest jokes. I wouldn't dream about taking a flame thrower to anyone in real life.
End parental neglect; teach people ethics!
As an experiment, have you ever tried to escape marketing? I mean really tried? As an adult, I walk through life with advertising filters on. I ignore billboards as much as possible, I use a junkbuster proxy, and I skip commercials on my ReplayTV. I suspect most of us adults do.
Does my kid? No, he watches the commercials as intently as the programs (and sometimes moreso.) He hasn't finished growing up yet. He hasn't learned that life is too short to pay attention to advertisements yet (a lesson I'm trying very hard to impart.)
When we encounter age-inappropriate commercials while watching TV, we talk about them. We explain why mom and/or dad thinks that commercial is for something "bad" (the WWF cage match sh!t keeps running through my mind.) My son wrote a letter to the local movie theatre after they had a preview for an R movie (some movie trailer featuring large, loud explosions and mostly naked women) as a preview during Shrek. It bothered him that they were scaring the "little" kids (he was 12 at the time, and taking a civics class where they were supposed to write a letter of action to someone.) But he did something about it.
So, what is a parent to do? If that parent is truly trying to keep their kid from not being exposed to whatever, then what are the options? You and I both agree that this is both the right AND the responsibility of the parent. But now that parent can't take their child to a G or PG movie because the trailers are inappropriate (and unavoidable!)
I guess my point here is, as parents, my wife and I made the choices we could, but there is no escaping all marketing.
Oh, and I also agree with you that legislation isn't the answer. But I have to say that I think that these people have the right to let the manufacturers of these toys know how they feel. They also have the right to let Congress know how they feel. My kid at least wrote a letter. You don't have to sit on your ass. You can get a petition going and you can go out there and lobby right next to Hasbro's lobbyist, if you like. That is, if you think it's important that your kid needs to have every opportunity to watch commercials for the WWF wrestler with the "rip-your-head-off-and-crap-down-your-neck" action. You can even sit there at your computer and click off a letter to your congressman. Or you can just go back to your bookmarks and surf for free pr0n and goat sex.
I thought so.
Maybe that's why this non-story was posted to YRO.
John
John