With the highly anticipated Wicked movie set to come out later this month, Mattel toy manufacturer has released a line of dolls, featuring characters Elphaba and Glinda from the movie. However, these dolls have all been recalled due to a misprint on the back of their packaging. Instead of wickedmovie.com, the boxes display wicked.com, a URL owned by an adult- entertainment website. This means that these dolls, sold nationwide, in toy stores, Targets, Walmarts, and Amazon, have inadvertently directed significant traffic to the adult site, presumably coming from the young children whom the dolls are marketed towards. Google Trends data reveals that the adult site has seen its highest traffic since 2012, a trend which is almost certainly not coincidental.
Parents have since taken to social media to caution each other of the potential risk to their children’s emotional and moral well- beings. Some parents have voiced outrage at what they perceive to be an overt threat to their children’s innocence. Other parents have even suggested the misprint to not have been a mistake, but rather a cruel joke aimed at their children, resembling the likes of the infamous Barbie Liberation dolls, a similar scandal which happened in the 90s.
In 1993, the Barbie Liberation organization, an anonymous activist group, “performed surgery” on hundreds of G.I Joe and Barbie dolls, swapping their voice boxes. They gave Barbie a tough military voice and G.I. Joe a high-pitched feminine voice, both found to be highly offensive by many of the parents of the children these toys ended up in the hands of. Their aim was to highlight and disrupt gender norms reinforced by even children’s products.
While the Wicked doll incident may lack the intentionality of the Barbie liberation dolls project, and was likely just an unintentional manufacturing error, the moral panic its incited has been extremely resemblant. By connecting children to inappropriate content, whether through error or something more intentional, the misprint has put parents in a position in which they feel as though their children’s innocence is being put directly under attack. It echoes art crime tactics by undermining the trust that parents place in reputable brands, revealing how one small error can create waves of moral panic and public backlash. In both cases, toys became the medium through which trust in consumer culture could be tested.
Whether planned or accidental, these incidents make toys, one of the few commodities which are inherently symbolic of innocence and childhood, the same items which have incited a degree of distrust in major corporations. This is because, unlike many of the other things we consume, toys are unique in their emotional significance to consumers since they are so closely associated to our children. When a highly trusted corporation, like Mattel, breaches that trust, it forces consumers to be more hesitant when engaging in consumerism when it comes to their children.
These scandals highlight the high stakes of corporate responsibility in products aimed at children while serving as reminders of the potential impact of minor errors, such as a misprinted URL, or a full blown art activism, such as the Barbie liberation dolls, can have on public trust when it comes to the products we consume.
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The Wicked barbie doll scandal is hard to believe something that happened so recently considering the previous scandals Mattel had to face regarding the barbie dolls, like the barbie liberation dolls project. This website URL incident either being an accident or outcome of an individual wanting to pull a sick joke, both seem unlikely but one of those had to have happened. Most likely I would guess that this was a corporation slip up, a very big one considering out of all URLs, they somehow accidentally plugged one in connected to an adult films site. If this were a premeditated cruel joke, that would have been amazing how this made it through all the screenings and all the way onto the shelves. This definitely symbolizes that despite all the money in the barbies business, an insufficient system and bad screenings can lead to a disastrous outcome.
Hi Natalia, really interesting article! I have been seeing so many advertisements for the Wicked movie. I haven’t seen it yet, but I would like to. I was unaware of the Mattel scandal, which is quite alarming. I think a mistake like this should have been caught, considering how much goes into making these dolls. If I were a parent who bought this toy for my child, I would also be outraged. I don’t believe that this was a cruel joke because there is too much at stake for them to do something like that. The infamous Barbies of the ‘90s were controversial and pulled off the shelves, so I believe Mattel has learned its lesson. Especially considering all the press they got from making the Barbie movie. I don’t believe they would make such a foolish mistake again. I agree with your point about how this incident undermines parents’ trust in the company. As a parent, I would also be upset and would lose some trust in the brand. I think Mattel will need to seriously reconsider it’s practices to ensure something like this never happens again.
Really interesting article, Natalia! I agree with you on several of the points you made in this article. I do not think that Mattel would have intentionally misprinted the website in order to corrupt the innocence that is associated with toys and children. Not only did the recall probably cost them a lot of money, but I’m sure they lost a good amount of customers due to this mishap. However, I do think it is shocking that nobody caught the mistake before the dolls made it to the shelves. I really liked how you compared it with the GI Joe and Barbie dolls, where the Barbie Libertarian group swapped voice boxes to perpetuate gender norm stereotypes. Although the Barbie Libertarians was an intentional act and the Wicked misprint was most likely not, they both had the same effect: betraying parents’ trust in toy manufacturers that attacked their children’s innocence. I also really liked how you talked about the impact toy manufacturers have over what children see and play with. Even simple errors like this can have a large negative outcome on children’s lives. Overall, great job!
Hi Natalia,
I cannot believe that this mistake even happened with such a big company, therefore, I understand why parents believe it might be another type of intentional move such as the GI Joe figures and barbie dolls. I found your statement about art crime using tactics that undermine parents’ trust really interesting because it had me questioning which art crimes have done this. The GI Joe and Barbie incident most definitely undermined parents’ trust in the companies to make their children toys in addition to the destruction of confederate statues. Recently, a debate on whether confederate statues should remain up has arose and I believe that this relates to the Wicked crisis because similar to how parents trust a large company to not promote a R-rated website, regardless of if it was an accident, parents also trust the city to correctly inform their children of historical events. Your post has brought to light how children play a huge role in activism today and fuel a fight for a better world. I am so curious about whether this was simply a mistake because they were moving to fast trying to push out these promotional products, or if something else is at play here. I personally cannot see Mattel doing this as a joke or for activism because that would cause them to lose a lot of support.