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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.
I spent a lot of my time playing FPS style games, but I was 17 years old + (today I'm 29) and I was mature enough to realize that it's a game, and that there's nothing fun about violence except when it's in a movie or in a video game.
I would NOT let a 10 year-old play Quake 3 or Half-Life. Just like I wouldn't let the same kid watch a porno movie or a gory horror film.
I feel it desensitizes a child too much. So I have to say I agree.
It should be noted that #1 on the list is the MGS2 Solid Snake ACTION FIGURE, not the game.
Lawn darts... they were my favorite. We used to make the neighbor kid catch 'em.
Anyways I still remember an SNL skit of a toy manufacturer with "Bag `O Broken Glass" and "Play Doctor Medical Waste Goop" .... now those were some toys, but video games that promote violence. How about you get mom and dad to quit yellin at each other through the stress of X-Mas? Erm wait, it's toys that make people corrupt not unbearable living enviroments.
But yeah ... I will be giving out rocks for this years holliday season ... maybe I'll put a slashdot on um so I can sell ... my pet slashdot rock.(C) :-)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Seriously, this is just another Frontpage 4.0 built site from a mother who saw too much violence in her kid's toys and decided to put together a small site with her opinions on what toys are bad influences on young minds.
Wasn't that the beauty of the Internet? To give each and every person a place to express their opinions and ideas, regardless of just how silly it is?
If we're worried about toys that promote violence, I wonder why there's no mention of those Topps trading cards featuring all the big names in Operation Enduring Freedom and all the different weaponry at work, etc.
I guess Doom's mistake was that it promotes the killing of aliens instead of Afghans.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Here are some other dangerous toys that didn't make that list.
Heh.. People are amusing these days.. My son loves DBZ, I love it, my mom loves it. It's not as realistically violent as Looney Tunes. I mean, so Goku shoots out some sort of flaming orb. Tom and Jerry chase each other with knives (something children have seen with their own eyes) yet Tom and Jerry is acceptable because it's a "classic" ? It's bullshit. Years ago people played with GI Joes. DBZ action figures are harmless. If my son wants to pretend to shoot some spirit bomb on me, that's fine. It's better than him chasing me down with a steak knife.
Kids who grew up on a farm knew all about sticking pigs and chopping off chicken heads for dinner, as well as procreation. They shouldn't so be isolated from 'reality', it just creates people who are so darned squimish they donate money to PETA and worry about rabbits getting a rash from testing cosmetics on them.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It's the same bullshit we're more accustomed to reading from Jamie and Michael -- whenever a government or organization takes action, they piously declare that aprents should take responsibility for their children. And then it's a fundamental assault on freedom when parents decide to parent instead of following the prescribed "Your Rights Online" way of life.
I've managed to learn not to flame most of the hypocrisy here ("A new patch for a Windows bug -- the closed source development model is so buggy! A new Linux kernel patch -- look how quickly the open-source model finds and fixes bugs!") but I find this one so offensive it pushes my buttons every time.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Here's a page with links to previous years' Dirty Dozen lists.
I am always surprised when they list Nerf toys as dangerous and encouraging kids to be violent. It's Nerf for goodness sakes!
Not only that, but when they do single out a Nerf toy, it's usually one of the pathetically underpowered ones. Case in point: Their 1988-89 Dirty Dozen List shows the Nerf Pulsator as the top offender. My favorite gripe of theirs: "box refers to the darts as "ammo."".
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.
But, as a parent, I think I can tell which toys are too explicitly (or even suggestively) violent for my child. And even if I didn't know anything about software and video games, they now have a ratings system that tells me which age group for which they are most appropriate.
I think the thing that disturbs me most about this is not that some people would compile a list like this - people are free to state their opinions about toys and games all they want - it's that parents would rely so heavily on these types of lists to make their decisions for them. To me, it's just further evidence of a parent's wish to simply not be bothered or involved.
If you really want to have some influence on what your kids are getting into, then for the love of all things good, GET INVOLVED. Use some common sense! Do you want your kids considering guns as toys? No? Then don't buy them gun-wielding toys. It's a pretty simple concept. Don't want your kids to get the idea in their head that head-to-head combat is Good Thing[tm]? Then don't buy them fighting games. It's all very, very common-sensical. There are lots of toys from which to choose. Pick the ones with which you feel most comfortable.
My sigs always suck.
I always throught Happy Fun Ball was the most dangerous SNL toy....
I sure wish they made those, though a few of the random toys out of the grocery store quarter machines probably are as "safe" as HFB...
Dumb Slashdot editors:
./--they post stuff that they have no CLUE about.
./ pile on began, completely tearing this guy apart. Turns out the guy is in charge of basically the physical plant security there--he has nothing to do with software. I email Chris Dibona about this, he even replied that he knew that, but decided to leave it out of the article.
1 - The MGS2 thing is about the action figures, not the game.
2 - They don't rank the toys, so saying "#1 on the list..." doesn't mean what it's the worst.
3 - Nowhere on the page does it say "Most Dangerous Toys"
In fact, if you go to the front page of the web site, it states:
The mission of The Lion & Lamb Project is to stop the marketing of violence to children. We do this by helping parents, industry and government officials recognize that violence is not child?s play ? and by galvanizing concerned adults to take action
I don't think that is too bad of a thing. They are complaining that the MGS2 toy is marketed to children 5 and up, while the game is definitely a more mature title. Just another example of the complete morons who run
As another example, there was an article a week back or so about a security guy from MS being hired by the White House. Of course, the
Okay, I'm done ranting.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
The site says these are "Toys to Avoid" and says nothing about "Dangerous Toys". The PRIVATE ORGANIZTION'S agenda is to stop promoting violence to children, and this list is in line with that aim.
I didn't see "Most Dangerous Toys" anywhere.
This story sucks.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
for things that "may" or "may not" be bad for a child's psychi, maybe these parents should spend that time WITH their children...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Jeez --- a private site, simply listing toys that concerned parents might want to avoid this Christmas. That's all, folks!
Even worse is the crap quality of the negative responses. "If your children are jerks it's your fault, not the toys", "You should spend more time parenting and less time on this website." Unbelievable. Has it occurred to any of you that taking the time to choose toys for your children --- instead of buying whatever crap is marketed to them --- is actually evidence of being a good parent?
But, of course, /. hypocrites know no reason. It's techno-libertarian free internet for me, but get your site off my internet for thou. I'm sure if the story had been "Open Source Community Develops User-Driven Database of Toy Ratings" you'd all be creaming yourselves about the power of Open Source.
Now before you start complaining "But they didn't mean that kind of dangerous," I know what they meant. They meant "violent and potentially psychologically damaging to innocent young children." Now, if this is what parents are most concerned about these days, then either the world is a whole lot safer now than it was a few years ago, or those parents are unfit to raise a child. I'm sure there are many other toys out there that could physically hurt a child (if there aren't, I propose creating a small metal baseball bat and calling it the "Big Brother Basher"), and those are the toys I would consider "dangerous." If you don't want your kids exposed to violence and need someone to tell you that stuff with guns is violent, perhaps it isn't the toys that present the most danger to your kids.
Moving on to the humor side:
A series of plastic action figures based on the violent anime cartoon program Dragon Ball Z.
There's violence in that show? I admit that I don't follow the show, but I've flipped through it several times (some in an attempt to understand the appeal), and the characters are always either standing around talking, flying, staring at each other, or all blurred in scenes that resemble bizarre mating rituals. If anything, I'd be worried about kids being exposed to too much stupidity from that show, not to mention the promotional material for the toys: "front kicking action!" "side kicking action!" "double punch action!" Was this stuff written by people who make lesbian porn action figures or something?
It's not the games. It's not the action figures. It's not the toys with "super-duper killer-missle launching action". It's parents who don't know how to teach a kid what's right, what's wrong, and how to tell the difference. Reminds me of a recent Penny Arcade strip
... Hillary Rosen declared the iPod the year's most dangerous toy.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Pinball was a different situation. The City of Chicago banned it inside the city limits, largely, I think, because it was used for illegal gambling. Which was ironic because Chicago was the place where most of the machines were made (Chicago Coin, Chicago Dynamic Industries, etc.). Or perhaps that was why it had once gotten out of hand.
I grew up in the New York area where pinball was everywhere and considered quite harmless. Sure, if you "won" (mostly on skill) you got a free game for your quarter. But that wasn't really gambling. Indeed a good resort hotel was one where the kids' area (in those days, the early sixties, many resort hotels had supervised summer camp-like kids' programs; as a parent today, I miss them) had a *free* pinball machine (often just the door taken off the coin box). I played them the way kids today play video games. And the video game largely killed pinball by displacing it from arcades, though there are some diehard pinball fans and some machines still around.
The Lionandlamb listing is, as others have noted, a list of violent, not "dangerous", games and toys. A different list comes out every year of dangerous toys, things that can actually hurt your body. Check out http://www.toysafety.org . Most of these look innocent but have parts that come loose in the wrong way, or have some other non-obvious hazard.
I really miss my old Micronaut toys. The rocket launchers on those things could fire small bits of plastic at near relativistic speeds.
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
For finding me these sweet K'NEX battlemech sets. Screw christmas, I'm getting the Timberwolf (the *right* name for a madcat :) ) for myself.
-- iCEBaLM
Nail on the head. However, what scares me about people like this is their inherent need to impress their views on others. Maybe some are just looking out for their own kids (of course if this is the case why can't they just go to the store and look at the toy themselves..), but far too many of them want to rant to the world about how this or that toy is BAD. Very rarely is this just to share opinions, most often it's a nice subtle way of saying "this is how YOU should raise YOUR children".
Then again, I may be biased. I grew up with oodles of everything that was claimed to be violent/pornographic/bad for kids, and I'm a hell of a lot more stable and non-violent that a lot of people out there. *shrug* Guess my parents took the time to explain reality vs. fantasy to me.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I think the hair-trigger threshold that most people around here have for unleashing verbal abuse at innocuous sites whose opinion differs from theirs constitutes its own dataset about the desensitizing effects of violence on children.
Jeez --- a private site, simply listing toys that concerned parents might want to avoid this Christmas. That's all, folks!
Well that's not all though. This same organization is lobbying the US gov't to actually STOP production of these toys. No one on slashdot is advocating shutting this site down. NOW who's afraid of a different opinion?
Has it occurred to any of you that taking the time to choose toys for your children --- instead of buying whatever crap is marketed to them --- is actually evidence of being a good parent?
Yes. And to be honest, I'd much prefer a parent actually LOOK at a toy and think FOR THEMSELVES about the good/bad qualities of it. Much better than simply reading a list of someone else's opinions and taking action on that, when you don't even know if this someone else shares any of the same values that you do.
Maybe you miss the point of why so many people find this scary. It's not a differing opinion that bothers me - it's a differing opinion forced down my throat that does. And of course using a website as an excuse to be a bad parent.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The article is misleading; these are not dangerous toys, only toys that someone considers politically incorrect. Nothing is mentioned about any specific dangers that the toys present, only that the toys have links to violent videogames and television shows.
;)
Some of them shoot foam missiles; big deal! I think that a foot high robot that fires at room intruders is rather endearing.
Dangerous toys are things with parts that small children can choke on, stuff up their nose, or otherwise injure themselves with: sharp corners, fast-moving, massive projectiles, etc. Also, things containing dangerous substances, such as lead-based jewelry for children.
There is little connection between these properties and violence. Even in the category of fast moving things that can injure: this area is probably dominated by sporting equipment. Better not be getting your kid that hockey stick!
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!
I can't imagine too many people initially going to the site, or taking the content of the site too seriously; "oh, look honey, there's that toy that that web site said was bad, so we better not buy it for little Johnny"... yeah right.
:)
Then enter Slashdot.
Now the webmaster is looking at the site stats of hundreds of thousands of hits and is thinking "man! what a difference I'm making!". Little does he/she know that the general reaction is "geesh... what next!". Spurred on by this "success", they're already planning the next project.
For that matter, they could probably take their web logs showing the hits they are getting to some politician *spit* and show what a "great job" they're doing protecting the children of society (after all, lots of hits means it's working, right?), and get some federal funding to carry on the torch.
Oh joy.
$0.02 (CDN)
It's CmdrTaco's summary. The article only claims these are "Toys to Avoid", by whatever standards the site uses. Which begs the further question of whether CmndTaco presenting this as "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" is misleading as well.
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