Dangerous? toys enclosed with Disney magazines

[Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr.]

Hi all!

A few days ago there was a case mentioned in Norwegian media that have made
me even more critical towards some of the toys enclosed with the
Scandinavian Donald Duck weeklies. Read about it here:
http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=56965

A seven year old Boy cut of his own frontal teeth with a pair of thongs
because he was harassed by other kids. The other kids told him he had
"Rabbit-teeth". In Sweden there has been a similar case with a boy with big
outstanding ears. He had to go through plastic surgery to be accepted among
the other kids. Even though media haven't pointed out any special cause for
the kids behaving this way – I find it pretty plausible that some toys like
big loose teeth or big loose ears enclosed to the Scandinavian Donald Duck
weeklies may have caused the attitudes leading to this harassment. This
because such toys tell kids that big teeth, big ears, etc. are stupid and
that it's OK to make fun of it. Anyway this is at least as plausible as
claiming that use of alcohol causes violence.

So what about enclosing some more serious stuff instead? One idea could be
for Egmont to hire Don Rosa to do a set of drawings for a new Donald Duck
deck of playing cards – presenting different Duckburg-characters on every
single card, just like in the famous "Iraqi 'Most-Wanted' Deck of Playing
Cards". Such an enclosure would definitely not encourage any harassment
among innocent kids.

Sigvald :-)