Parents: Check New List of "Good" and "Bad" Holiday Toys
Dec. 4, 2000 (Washington) -- With this being the holiday season of "peace on earth", a grassroots group is warning that parents shouldn't purchase toys that glorify violence.
Bone Crunchin' Buddies and the Wolverine Battlin' Bop Bags top the annual "dirty dozen" list of violent toys released Monday by the Lion & Lamb Project.
According to Daphne White, executive director of the project, "These toys -- which cross-market violent, adult-rated products to children -- make it clear that industry's main concern is little more than their own bottom line."
Jakks Pacific's "bone crunchin'" dolls, for example, represent wrestling figures and permit children to twist their arms and legs. But the manufacturer recommends it for kids 3 and up. And the four-foot tall inflatable Wolverine bop bags, put out by Toy Biz and based on a PG-13 movie, tell kids to "hit me in the gut again" when struck. It's officially aimed at children 5 and older.
White, who said that toys are getting increasingly violent, compared her effort to struggles that began decades ago to restrict smoking and crack down on drunken driving.
Psychologist Karen Shanor, PhD, tells WebMD that toys are crucial in shaping kids and that violent toys are unhealthy. "Children learn through play," she says. "How a child spends his or her time is very important. Toys are ways that kids learn about the world and practice being a part of the world." Shanor has written a book, The Emerging Mind, that discusses the psychological development of children.
In July, the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry stated, "Children exposed to violent programming at a young age have a higher tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children who are not so exposed."
But in a statement, the Toy Manufacturers Association of America said, "The accusation that individual toys promote violence does not stand up to academic scrutiny." The association quotes Jeffrey Goldstein, a media professor at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who claims, "There are no 'violent' or 'nonviolent' toys. There are simply toys. ... They give form to behavior by stimulating play, but they do not motivate aggressive behavior. ... How a parent behaves toward a child has much more influence than a toy."
Bone Crunchin' Buddies and the Wolverine Battlin' Bop Bags top the annual "dirty dozen" list of violent toys released Monday by the Lion & Lamb Project.
According to Daphne White, executive director of the project, "These toys -- which cross-market violent, adult-rated products to children -- make it clear that industry's main concern is little more than their own bottom line."
Jakks Pacific's "bone crunchin'" dolls, for example, represent wrestling figures and permit children to twist their arms and legs. But the manufacturer recommends it for kids 3 and up. And the four-foot tall inflatable Wolverine bop bags, put out by Toy Biz and based on a PG-13 movie, tell kids to "hit me in the gut again" when struck. It's officially aimed at children 5 and older.
White, who said that toys are getting increasingly violent, compared her effort to struggles that began decades ago to restrict smoking and crack down on drunken driving.
Psychologist Karen Shanor, PhD, tells WebMD that toys are crucial in shaping kids and that violent toys are unhealthy. "Children learn through play," she says. "How a child spends his or her time is very important. Toys are ways that kids learn about the world and practice being a part of the world." Shanor has written a book, The Emerging Mind, that discusses the psychological development of children.
In July, the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry stated, "Children exposed to violent programming at a young age have a higher tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children who are not so exposed."
But in a statement, the Toy Manufacturers Association of America said, "The accusation that individual toys promote violence does not stand up to academic scrutiny." The association quotes Jeffrey Goldstein, a media professor at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who claims, "There are no 'violent' or 'nonviolent' toys. There are simply toys. ... They give form to behavior by stimulating play, but they do not motivate aggressive behavior. ... How a parent behaves toward a child has much more influence than a toy."
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