Updated
After coming under fire from a Florida mum who launched a petition last week for the sale of dolls depicting fictitious drug dealer Walter White and other characters from the TV show Breaking Bad, Toys R Us is pulling the four collectible dolls from its shelves.
Plastic figurines include Walter White holding a handgun and White’s accomplice, Jesse Pinkman, wearing a protective suit used in the manufacture of crystallised methamphetamine.
The Toys R Us decision to sell the doll, “complete with a detachable sack of cash and a bag of meth, alongside children’s toys, is a dangerous deviation from their family friendly values,” Susan Schrivjer of Fort Myers, Florida wrote in an online petition for the products to be pulled.
“Knowing that those are the items that one needs to make meth, I just think that it’s wrong,” Schrivjer told Fox affiliate WFTX.
“Get those taken off the shelves and put them in an appropriate store. Put them in an adult store.”
Breaking Bad follows the story of White, a high school chemistry teacher who morphs into a drugs kingpin.
Toys R Us did not immediately respond to a call for comment from AFP. In a statement to NBC News, the toy store said “the product packaging clearly notes that the items are intended for ages 15 and up” and “are located in the adult action figure area of our stores”.
By Tuesday morning, the Walter White doll was no longer available on the shop website, though the Pinkman character remained.
Schrivjer’s petition, posted on the Obama administration’s Change.org website, had garnered more than 7000 signatures by Tuesday.
One petition supporter, posting under the name Jaime Keasler from Georgia, wrote: “It’s sick that a company would design kids toys that glorify the making of meth”.
“As my 11 year old daughter just said, ‘I thought we were suppose(d) to teach kids not to do drugs.’ Exactly.”
Toys R Us describes itself as “the world’s leading dedicated toy and baby products retailer” and has stores throughout the US and in 35 countries and jurisdictions.
AFP
