Children get 'Wicked' surprise from Mattel this holiday season
Dolls pulled from stores after wrong website printed on packaging
DAYTON, OH – When Jennifer Pepperidge surprised her daughter Olivia with a pair of new dolls for her eighth birthday, it was a far more wicked surprise than she bargained for.
Pepperidge, a farmer from Farmsville, Ohio, who has no connection to Pepperidge Farms, bought Elphaba and Glinda from Mattel’s new line of officially licensed Wicked movie character dolls for her daughter.
“Olivia loves the Wizard of Oz and can’t wait to see Wicked in theaters, so when she opened her gift bag from me at her birthday party, she was very excited to get these dolls,” Pepperidge said.
Some of Olivia’s friends weren’t familiar with the Wicked characters, so she asked her mom to show them a trailer of the new Wizard of Oz prequel entering theaters November 22.
Pepperidge gave her daughter the family iPad to access the movie’s website and play its trailer.
But there was one problem.
The Wicked movie dolls packaging has the web address www.wicked.com printed on it instead of www.wickedmovie.com.
What happened next was every mother’s worst nightmare.
“As soon as the trailer started, I thought, ‘The hair and make up people made Ariana Grande look way look a completely different person.’” Pepperidge said.
“Then Elphaba and Glinda shared a sensual embrace while wearing nothing but lingerie, and I thought, ‘Oh my God! Not another classic children’s story ruined by the woke Hollywood agenda!’”
Twenty seconds later, Pepperidge got the feeling that this Wicked trailer was not intended for female viewers under the age of eighteen but for male viewers over the age of eighteen.
“The next thing I know, the Wicked Witch of the West is violently scissoring the Good Witch of the North on a bed drenched in their own sweat and other bodily fluids, and I thought, ‘This can’t be the right movie, can it?’”
It was not the right movie.
Instead of playing the trailer to the Universal Pictures movie Wicked starring Ariana Grande as Glinda, Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, and Jeff Goldblum as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, she played a trailer to the Wicked Pictures movie The Wizard of Cock starring Coco Lovelock as Glenda, Ana Foxxx as Alphaba, and Will Pounder as The Wonderful Wizard of Cock.
Wicked Pictures is a motion picture company that produces feature-length pornographic films. By omitting the word “movie” from the web address on the packaging of its Wicked movie dolls, Mattel may have exposed thousands of young children to explicit adult content.
For its part, Mattel issued a public apology Sunday, saying, “We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this. Parents are advised that the misprinted, incorrect website is not appropriate for children.”
It went on to advise anyone who has purchased the dolls to discard the packaging or obscure the web address on it.
Since news of the packaging error spread on social media over the weekend, Mattel’s Wicked movie dolls have been removed from store shelves and online storefronts at Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon, and other major retailers.
But that move comes too little, too late for Jennifer Pepperidge and her daughter Olivia.
“I can’t take away the naughty images my daughter or her friends saw, I can’t keep Olivia from telling all the kids at school about the Wonderful Wizard of Cock, and I can’t stop the parents of Olivia’s friends from asking me why their children are moaning, groaning, and yelling, ‘Yes! Yes!’ as they make one Barbie sit on Ken’s face and another sit on his crotch.”