Children Toys that are banned around the world
29th of March 2022
5. Cabbage Patch Snack time kid
Anyone who was a child growing up in the 80s remembers Cabbage Patch dolls. The cute cuddly plastic children that derived from a Cabbage Patch. A self-referential explanation for reproduction echoed by discerning parents.
The Cabbage Patch doll line started when toymaker Xavier Roberts from Georgia handcrafted his signature dolls back in 1997 which he originally called “Little People”. A name is generic as spam but Roberts was insistent on maintaining a parentage for his manufactured offspring with titles like “babies” or “kids”, a rite of passage that his future target audience namely children would adopt as soon-to-be parents.
The marketing strategy was designed to entice children to adopt their Cabbage Patch Kids complete with a birth certificate and adoption papers blurring the line between fantasy role-playing and being a responsible caregiver.
In the 80s at the height of Cabbage Patch fever, psychologists have drawn children's innate sense of nurturing their dolls to validate their early parenting skills. By that token, it would seem that the only real issue for these kids is learning about how reproduction works in which Cabbage Patch Kids well aren't harvested from a Cabbage Patch at all. However, as the Cabbage Patch Empire rally through some commercial changes with its original company Kolko forfeiting the rights to Hasbro, it would become Mattel's hottest commodity for years.
The distinctively tailor-made dolls with their freckled braided hair and baby expressions seemed anything but a child's nightmare until a relaunch came with the snack time kid during the Christmas season in 1996 following a recent lag in popularity over the last decade. Mattel innovated the Cabbage Patch line with its titular doll containing a motorized mouth that stimulates eating included with plastic fries and carrots that you feed back into its mouth.
A newfound concept albeit for a mundane activity like chewing created a feeding frenzy in the most unappetizing way. With reports streaming in over the dolls’ Hannibal like tendency to gnaw on fingers and munch hair down to the roots with no traditional on and off switch to avoid chomping madness unless you count removing the battery-powered backpack as a fail-safe option. With the loose carrots and fries deposit, your fingers would become a meal.
Numerous cases over the defective snack time kit product erupt it into a legal fallout from Mattel prompting an immediate recall from an estimated 500,000 dolls in circulation compounding the megalithic toy company’s error by distributing refunds back to its consumers.
4. Freddy Krueger talking doll
When you think of a kid-friendly doll, the last image you'd expect to pop into your head is a serial murderer who stalks and kills teenagers in their dreams while they sleep. Freddy Kreuger is a deranged horribly burnt psychopath donning a fedora dirty red and green sweater and his signature weapon a glove fitted with knives on each fingertip.
During the 80s, this iconic horror legend was the quintessential bogeyman scaring up audiences with his unique ability to enter his victims dreams, popping wisecracks before piling on the bodies. But what's a slasher franchise without introducing a child's doll version of a mass murderer who racked up a death toll of slain kitties who gets burned by some angry parents.
Well, the company- Matchbox wanted to expand their market by tapping into the Nightmare on Elm Street saga, inventing the talking Freddy with a pull string to deliver some choice phrases. One must admit Matchbox scored on crafting a worthy miniaturised counterpart of Freddy, touching on all the details from his shabby boiler room attire to his hideous disfigurement but this was supposed to be a child's toy, a counter-intuitive move by matchbox who ended up pulling the doll after fever and protest from parental and religious groups.
3. Candy
Back in the 30s cigarettes were a staple item, not so much built for their health as it was an elegant and trendy statement. Speaking to the ethos of good taste, watch any of those old Hollywood movies those were the real puff daddy's who make smoking look and taste good.
Fortunately for kids who wanted to smoke after their parents, they had candy cigarettes which was comparatively less dangerous until medical reports in the 50s began slapping cigarettes with cross and bones health risks.
A primary reason for the appeal of candy cigarettes lies with the ingenious method to replicate adult brand names sometimes omitting or transposing letters from a trademark name so Marboro became Marlboro, Camel became Acmel, Winston became Winstun.
Maybe it's just me but striking a single letter from household name tobacco companies did little to mask the growing concern that cigarettes are carcinogens. Even addictive parents who couldn't shake their nicotine vice feared the impression that candy cigarettes served as a legitimate gateway to experimenting with the real thing.
With evidence mounting over the health implications regarding smoking, a push to ban candy cigarettes was considered in the state of North Dakota which effectively managed to prohibit the cancerous sweet meat between 1953 and 1967.
Legislative measures to ban candy cigarettes failed to pass through Congress respectively in 1970 and 1991 leaving a dim hope on the face of the next generation.
However, following the government's laxity to enforce regulations against candy cigarettes, an alternative solution was implemented by replacing the word cigarettes with sticks. The only thing missing from this equation is preceded by a six-letter word.
Candy cigarettes always had a long history of indirectly promoting cigarette smoking among impressionable youth. Now, in the 21st century they're relatively hard to find with many European countries banning them all together.
2. Furbies
Launched back in 1998, Furbies were those cute cuddly fuzzy gremlins or hamster owl creatures or whatever they are with their beak-like mouths that made a splash with consumers leading into the Christmas season. At the outset, consumers were headstrong and stampeding their local retailer when Furbies hit the market inciting parental chaos as supply could not meet the demand.
Tiger Electronics introduced their line of fur bees as an archetype for the first domestically owned robot. Outfitted with technology designed to transmute their original furbish language of gibberish into English words and phrases with a network of built-in computerized chips and sensors creating a fully interactive Furby made engaging with humans an unprecedented feat.
However, its integrated system of pre-programmed furbished phonetics coupled with learning English skills made it a concern for the infraction against intelligence. The National Security Agency was under the false impression that fur bees with its complex audio hardware capabilities could record and repeat sensitive information outside the headquarters. As a safety precaution, employees were forbidden from bringing their Furby to work.
It should be mentioned that the original furbies were dynamic tools for hackers to disassemble and tamper with their circuitry for nefarious reasons to make every paranoid at the Pentagon think Code Red.
In a statement to dispel NSA's fears of a national security breach, the owner of Tiger electronics Roger Shipman confirmed that furbies were not designed for consumers to involuntarily co-opt inside knowledge about the government. The airline industry and medical field imposed similar playtime restrictions on bringing Furbies to work seeing that their technological redesigns could respectively interfere with navigational and medical equipment.
1. Steve the Tramp (Dick Tracy)
Dick Tracy features the titular Private Eye bringing criminal baddies to justice donning his signature yellow overcoat and Fedora and trademark wristwatch from which he handles all dispatch calls. The number of colourful villains in the Dick Tracy franchise is as long as their rap sheets from big boy capris to flattop to prune face and so on.
Let's focus on a small-time crook called Steve the Tramp. While Steve the tramps name might have had some connotations back in the 30s, social movements progressed in redefining class associations that can sound offensive today.
Homeless communities took offense over the blatant packaging of Steve the Tramp with a caption that reads “ignorant bum you'll smell him before you see him.
Disclaimer: This article and all material used in this content is used for entertainment and educational purposes only.
I honestly have no idea these toys existed before now. Well, safe to say they had it comin'. The companies that produced them should learn a thing or two from other toy creators. I mean, goodness!