This post started out as a normal tech post regarding a malfunctioning toy and ran the gamut to turn into a personal rant about lawyer-addicted people and the hyper-sensitive parents. So as not to bore you readers to death or anything, here are just the highlights of how an increasingly high-tech environment causes misinformed actions and opportunistic displays to take place.

The Elmo Knows Your Name Doll is a cute and fuzzy talking doll that you can program to say some select phrases and names. Apparently, an American family is claiming that the doll that they bought for their two-and-a-half year old son, who’s an avid fan of this particular cartoon character, started making death threats after the batteries were changed. Right off the bat, this sounds a little bit fishy for me, especially considering the fact that the toy is programmable, but there’s more.

The stated” phrase” was “kill James” – according to the toddler’s mother at least. Neither Fisher-Price’s site (the company marketing the dolls) nor the family in question made the programming process of the doll clear to the reporter – which can be found through this link, and short of going out and buying one, I doubt if I can find out about it easily. Nevertheless, I do know that Fisher-Price limits the words you can actually enter into the doll, perhaps to avoid exactly this situation.

                                             Elmo can't be as bad as Saturday Night TV...
 

Toys like these are quite high-tech compared to toys a generation before, and is based on easily-accessible computer connectivity, so it is wholly believable that such a phrase can be manually recorded into the doll’s memory. The mother’s complaint to the manufacturer and the resulting “action” of the manufacturer reflects the hyper-sensitive nature of many industries that can easily be quelled with a little common sense and a little less sensationalism.

I’m not saying that a two year-old should be (supposedly) hearing this kind of thing from any source, but I doubt if the boy isn’t already exposed to the TV or radio, even from the periphery. In addition to my healthy suspicion that all this is simple exaggeration and balderdash, as well as a desire to get into the spotlight for 15 minutes of fame, I doubt whether this kind of phrase,from this kind of doll, will have any lasting impression on a kid living in this day and age – the possibility that all this is simple sensationalism adds to my cynicism. For all we know, it was saying “Tic-kle James” (kle James = kill James, get it?) and the boy misheard, or mis- said what he heard, and the mother panicked.

                                             The mother of the toy's owner.

I’m not trying to be an insensitive j3rk or anything, but simple common sense and reprogramming the doll (and testing it out for a while afterwards) before giving it back to the little boy negates all of the wishy-washy statements and “distraught-ness” that the mother is feeling to nil. Or it should, at least. If the mother knew better, she could at least have made a better excuse – like “it was already loaded with the phrases out of the factory” – which is much more believable. If the part about the doll actually saying “kill James” is true, I’ll gladly eat my words, but even then, this is no reason to blow things up and try to get your 15 minutes of fame.