There are so many things to worry about when you’re buying toys for your kids. Will they choke on the small parts, are they actually going to play with it for more than 72 hours, and will it accidentally be packaged with a link to a porn site on its box. Wait… what?
If you’re excited for the new rendition of Wicked, featuring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, to be released, you’re not alone. But it seems that in all the excitement to promote the movie, Mattel — the famous toy company that brought you Barbie — might have fucked up. And no, they didn’t make Elphaba’s skin the wrong shade of green or make Glinda look like too good of a witch. In fact, what they did is pretty wicked indeed: they accidentally posted a link to a porn site on the box. I’m sorry, I mean on every box they put those new Wicked dolls in. You know, dolls. Those things that literal children play with?
Instead of linking kids to www.wickedmovie.com where they can watch the official trailer for the movie and even secure tickets to see the show, the box included a link to www.wicked.com, which is in fact a porn site. When you go to the link Mattel accidentally included, you’re prompted to confirm if you’re over 18 years of age (which of course any child can just lie about). Then, you’re taken to “the ultimate destination for award-winning adult content.” You can then go to click on your favorite porn stars (including the famous Stormy Daniels) and even watch a live web cam. You know, just what you want when you’re buying toys for your children.
Mattel quickly realized their massive fuck-up and issued an apology and said they’d be “taking immediate action” but we don’t know what that is just yet. In the meantime though, they’ve advised parents to throw away the packaging or the black out the link.
“Mattel was made aware of a misprint on the packaging of the Mattel ‘Wicked’ collection dolls, primarily sold in the U.S., which intended to direct consumers to the official WickedMovie.com landing page,” Mattel said in a statement to Variety. “We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this.”
In good news for the porn site, searches for “wicked.com” have surged to their highest levels since mid-2012. Welp, you win some, you lose some.
