According to Dayton’s WHIO, mother Nicole Allen walked into a local Dollar Store and purchased what she thought was a “magic wand” for her 2-year-old daughter. When they got the wand home and the daughter started playing with it, Nicole was shocked to find that when the silver metallic “snowflake” was peeled back, it revealed a photo of what appeared to be a demonic woman slitting her wrists with a knife.
Nicole was outraged but when reporters confronted store owner Amar Moustafa, he simply said that parents need to pay more attention to what they are buying for their children, pointing out that the name of the toy is “Evilstick”. He has no current plans to pull the toy from the shelves, but said he would consider doing so if enough people complained.
OK, I’ll admit it: I absolutely LOVE dollar stores of all kinds! You can find some of the coolest, weirdest things lurking in their aisles. But there’s a reason everything’s being sold for only a dollar. These types of stores sell everything from expired food and damaged products to items which could only be termed “bootlegs”. In these stores, you get what you pay for.
I’m not faulting this woman for buying a $1.00 toy for her child. Heck, I’ve gone into those stores and dropped $20.00 on stuff for Courtney (and OK, some stuff for me, too. Gotta feed the Strange & Spooky Museum, you know). But here’s the thing: I don’t let Courtney out of my sight when she playing with any of those toys because I know they are all probably going to break, leak, or perhaps spontaneously combust within 15 minutes.
I think the fact that, as the shop owner points out, what is being called a “magic wand” is actually clearly labelled “Evilstick”. That and the idea that the “wonderful music” the device is said to emit is actually one of those traditional Halloween laughs should have given the mom a couple of hints that this wasn’t really a wand that was going to summon rainbows and magical pixies.
Do I think it’s an appropriate toy for children, especially a 2-year-old. whom the mother bought the EvilStick for? Certainly not. For one, if you look closely at the picture above, you can see it’s labelled for ages 3 and up. But I think even 3 might be a little young for something like this. But again, I think in this case, the mom should have taken a closer look at the packaging and the toy before chucking it in her buggy.
And yes, if anyone happens to be in a Dayton-area Dollar Store, I’d like an EvilStick, please. Not for Courtney, though. It’s for me, even though I’m pretty sure just touching that metallic-looking snowflake is going to give me cancer, Black Lung, and perhaps a wee bit of gout.
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You can read the original report and watch the video, on WHIO’s site. Just give a click here.
Another report on the incident is available at The Independent, a news wire site from the UK. Great article if for no other reason that the author of the article seems amazed that the US has places called “Dollar Stores”, although they often refer to them as the “$.100 store”.
