Mattel Hit With $5M Class Action Lawsuit Over Pornographic Material On Wicked Doll Packaging
As Wicked dominates the box office, the toys have been embroiled in a major controversy as dolls aimed at little girls with the property shipped out with a link to a pornography website on the back of the box. Now, Mattel is getting sued for their action figure line.
While the whole concept of promoting something called “Wicked” to little girls seems obscene to begin with, the movie adaptation of a musical involving the two witches from Wizard of Oz: the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good.
The movie was a part of the biggest Thanksgiving box office on record, which hit $118.2 million over its five day stretch, according to Variety, beat out by Moana 2 which opened with $225 million.
With a successful movie comes merchandising, which Mattel got ahead of the curve with their two Barbie-style dolls of the lead characters. Unfortunately, the first printing of these dolls had a link not to the movie’s website but to a pornography website by the same name, showing the dangers of openly branding a film with a name glorifying evil like “Wicked.”
Mattel pulled the toys from the shelves and issued an apology once this occurred, but the damage had been done.
One mother is now launching a class action lawsuit after claiming her daughter’s been psychologically damaged because of the dolls. The mother claims that she purchased the doll for her daughter before the recall, and her daughter then used an iPhone to go to the website and was exposed to hardcore pornographic material.
“After opening the box that contained the Wicked Doll, Plaintiff’s minor daughter used an iPhone to visit the website shown on Defendant’s packaging,” the lawsuit filing says. “To her absolute shock, the website, ‘Wicked.com’, had nothing to do with the Wicked Doll. Rather, Wicked.com pasted scenes of pornographic advertisements across her phone screen.”
“These scenes were hardcore, full on nude pornographic images depicting actual intercourse, and can be available for an in-camera review by the court as necessary,” the filing continues. “Plaintiff’s minor daughter immediately showed her mother the photographs and both were horrified by what they say. If Plaintiff had been aware of such an inappropriate defect in the Product, she would not have purchased it.”
The claim is is for $5,000,000 on the Mattel alleged error because the dolls are aimed at children as young as four with that material out on the packaging. Mattel did not even offer a refund for the doll according to the parent in the complaint.
Mattel issued Deadline this statement: ““The Wicked Dolls have returned for sale with correct packaging at retailers online and in stores to meet the strong consumer demand for the products. The previous misprint on the packaging in no way impacts the value or play experience provided by the product itself in the limited number of units sold before the correction. We express our gratitude to our consumers and retailers for their understanding and patience while we worked to remedy the issue.”
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