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December 4, 2000

TOY INDUSTRY CONTINUES TO PROMOTE VIOLENT TOYS DURING SEASON OF PEACE ON EARTH

Holiday Season Finds Help for Parents Seeking Alternatives to Violent Toys

Despite FTC Report, No Signs of Industry Self-Regulation

Washington, DC -- As millions of people shop for childrens toys during this season of Peace on Earth, some toy manufacturers continue their practice of  marketing toys that glorify violence.  Despite a recent Federal Trade Commission report exposing a pattern of pervasive and aggressive marketing of adult violent materials to children, the toy and entertainment industries have made little progress toward ending these practices. 

Again this year, though, concerned parents can turn to a valuable resource to ensure that holiday presents promote peace, not pandemonium.  The Lion & Lamb Project -- a national grassroots initiative working to stop the marketing of violence to children exposes industry abuses with its annual holiday list of the Dirty Dozen Violent Toys. Several toys on this list are marketed to children under 10, even though they are based on video games, movies and television programs that are rated as appropriate only for teens or adults.  And, as it does every year, Lion & Lamb is also releasing its list of the Top 20 Recommended Toys. 

 It is past time for industry to take responsibility for the products they market to our children, says Daphne White, executive director of The Lion & Lamb Project.  Toy manufacturers claim they have childrens best interests at heart.  But these Joe Camel toys -- which cross-market violent, adult-rated products to children -- make it clear that industrys main concern is little more than their own bottom lines.

Some of the toys on this years Dirty Dozen list include action figures recommended for five-year-olds but based on characters in adult-rated video games; a toy gun with an automatic blaster and full or semi-automatic trigger, sold to eight-year-olds; and a World Wrestling Federation figure called a Bone Crunchin Buddy that suggests children ages three and up twist the figures elbows and knees to hear bone crunching action.

Lion & Lamb works with thousands of concerned parents across the country, offering parenting workshops and organizing community activities such as violent toy trade-ins and community play days.  Lion & Lamb has also developed a Parent Action Kit, winner of a Parents Choice award, which summarizes research about the ways children learn violent behaviors from the media while including techniques parents can use to defuse squabbles and solve conflicts without violence.  The Kit has both what you should know and what you can do sections to help transform concern about violent childrens entertainment into concrete action.

We do need more parental responsibility:  we need parents to become the authorities in their childrens lives and to teach their own values concerning violence, White says.  But in a culture where one billion dollars a year is spent by industry to advertise directly to children including the advertising of entertainment products parents have an uphill battle every day to teach personal values to their own children.  This is not a level playing field.

The Lion & Lamb has been urging the Toy Manufacturers of America (TMA) to formulate voluntary industry guidelines on the marketing of violent toys.  This past February, TMA President David Miller publicly committed at Toy Fair to begin work on such guidelines.    Since that time, unfortunately, no proposals or initiatives have been forthcoming from the nations toy industry.

The Lion & Lamb Project remains committed to working with the toy and entertainment industries to stop the marketing of violence to children.  There has been much talk in recent months about industry self-regulation - but no evidence of any real reforms.