Toys R Us Broken over Florida Mom's Petitions

Breaking Bad dolls pulled from Toys R Us after petition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29719150

"While the show may be compelling viewing for adults, its violent content and celebration of the drug trade make this collection unsuitable to be sold alongside Barbie dolls and Disney characters." -excerpt from the petition



Note: Toys R Us usually put Collector Figures in their own section at the stores.

I'm trying hard to laugh this off because it's better than launching into a profanity laced tirade on the stupidity of the situation. So I'll just nod along with Bryan Cranston's Tweet.

Tisk, Tisk those Florida moms didn't tell me nothing about the first five minutes of "Orange Is The New Black." They could have told me don't watch this with your wife at least.

Citizen Brick makes a lego type Breaking Bad "SuperLab" and RV:
http://citizenbrick.com/products/superlab-playset

I suspect these are not designed for kids.

Great!!!! why does it always have to be an idiot in FL, we have all the crazies...most come from up north though. lol

Hey!
Gotta talk to you.

And I know. We nothern folk crazy as hell

Monarch is correct. Up here we wear hats on our feet and burgers eat people.

As usual Doctor is right.
But not about me though
We are batcrap insane

hmmmm. On this episode of LFGTFY. We direct a certain mom to enter the following words into google search engine: Kill Bill toy. Mr Bill toy. Snake toy.
Enjoy it and put any word with toy. Find a good one? I new you would.
Many of the search results can dull a common-sense-challenged youngster to pick up a poisonous snake while thinking it was a toy or generally misbehave at some point in their estimatedly short life.




PS (enjoy):

Any kid "special" enough to pick up "habits" or should some "events" happen from those figures probably deserved it.

Having a kid play with characters that cook crystal meth is pretty iffy. Especially since Walter White is basically the show's main villain while also being the main protagonist, at least by the end of the show.

The thing is it's a toy clearly aimed at the Adult Collector, it even has a 15 years + rating and usually would not be set side by side with younger kid toys. Even the fictional "blue" meth in a baggie accessory is not visible and is hidden behind the labels of the packaging.


Considering how the show ended, I'd hardly call it a "celebration of the drug trade."

As a customer, it is her right and responsibility to express her opinion for the company to better improve its' customer service.

The fact is, it's a bad show. It DOES glorify drugs. It IS violent. They DO cuss. IF they must be sold (and, sadly, they must), sell them at a collector's shop. They don't have place next to Barbies and Disney characters because, hopefully, parents have enough sense to not let their kids watch the show (asking them to have enough sense to not watch it themselves is asking too much of Americans.)


End of tirade.

My take is that I wouldn't let my kids watch the show, and so they have no business getting toys from it. But the issue isn't whether or not kids will play with them and more of why are they in a kids store? All things considered, Toys R Us is more of a kids playground than an adults'.

If Toys R Us has the exclusives on these toys, then they're better suited to be sold on the company's website than in the brick and mortar complex. Adults would have no problem ordering them online.

I really can't decide if the Florida Moms' petition is a bit of an overreaction, but as a dad with kids I can't say they're wrong.

Thank you. It may be a tid much, but still, I'm happy to see SOMEONE taking a stand for what is crammed in kid's minds. They have enough trouble with all the teen/kid stars going bad. Role models are extinct.

I was that jerk cashier who would card kids who wanted to buy Grand Theft Auto, too, before the computer system at Target started doing it for us. I'd force the kids to have their parents buy the game for them, and then ask to see the parents' ID cards. The look of the parents when they asked me "Why?" and then I told them the content of the game was priceless. One grandma got mad at the kid for trying to scam her into getting an M-rated game, too. It was great.

I'm just a firm believer that kids need to be kids, and don't need to be rushed into experiencing the world of adults.

Marry me...

Though these toys have a right to be sold, and I don't think kids should be fully shielded from the world, but at a store so more child-oriented, I think it's too early, too easy for such toys that show off ghoulish violence associated with the drug trade for kids to have.

I enjoy violence in entertainment, but there's a certain level of it that shouldn't be accessible to children while they're still developing who they are going to be in life. The whole thing of Breaking Bad after all was about being broken towards bad, and accepting evil, in a way.

Unrelated, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are freakin adorable as themselves.

I am from FL originally and the funniest thing about this A LOT of FL moms would be in a meth head/dealer toy set.
All the crank heads factored into my desire to leave. LOL

The mom in question was supposedly a fan of the show, how else would she know about it. Anyone else who saw the figures would just see a middle aged man in various outfits. The Breaking Bad figures have been removed from Toys R Us entirely including it's website. Brick and mortar collector shops don't really exist anymore. They do not place these figures next to Barbies or Disney toys, they usually have a shelf space devoted to collector items like Predators, Aliens, Godzilla, Hunger Games or other Movie/TV merchandise.

This is how a responsible adult should be doing his/her job but I guess it's too much to ask from parents... Did you think GTA should've been removed from the stores? Which they still sell... http://www.toysrus.com/search/index...grand theft auto&origkw=grand theft auto&sr=1

But why stop there... Let's get rid of Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, ... There is still a lot of products with adult content (murder, r@p3, inc3st,) on Toys R Us shelves.

And probably the worst offender of them all is Barbie. But believe it or not, toy aisles are easy enough to navigate around, I don't let my nephews just around a store and besides I'm a firm believer in "teachable moments."

It probably would have been a more constructive use of our time to discuss various ways to broach a difficult subject (or not discuss) with a child.

I don't believe anything that's an M rated game, or R rated movie, or late night HBO series and the like, should be in a "kids" store. I don't see anything wrong with adults getting their collectables online or at some collector's shop (you're right, there aren't many, but who really shops outside the internet for anything these days?). That has nothing to do with parents' ability to parent and everything to do with marketing product to certain demographics and target audiences. Now the problem isn't specifically with the Breaking Bad collectibles, I think, but those figures certainly are a symptom. Of course, that's just my opinion. I mean, if I didn't feel Toys R Us was a kids store I probably wouldn't care. But for as long as I can remember, their slogan was "Where a kid can be a kid."

I'm probably one of the few guys who finally saw Hunger Games and was appalled it was marketed (the movie and the novels) towards kids, or rather tweens or something. Such a great idea! Let's make a story for a bunch of middle schoolers that's all about killing fellow middle schoolers.

People can also gripe that girls have it hard with Barbie as a role-model, but when I was growing up we had He-Man and WWF.


But I think that's a bit off topic.