M has a Leap Frog Word Whammer Fridge Phonics Set.
M likes this toy. While I am a little leery of electronic doodads, this one was pretty good. It helped M learn the sounds of all the letters. It taught her to spell some simple three letter words. The songs it plays are annoying as hell, but it bought me some serious time to prepare dinner while M played with it.
Until today, that is.
Today, when M was playing wiht her Word Whammer, it spelled
“G - U - N. You spelled GUN! Great WORD!”
What the freaking FUCK??? When this toy spells words M isn’t familiar with, she asks me what they mean. Pup, cot, mop. These are words I don’t mind explaining, but GUN?? How is that even necessary? M doesn’t know what a gun is or what it does. Why do I need to have a conversation about tools for scaring, hurting or killing animals or people to her while I am making dinner.
For the record, it isn’t like the Word Whammer has an exhaustive list of all three letter words programmed in there. Both Ass and God are absent, so why is GUN in there? Is it really a “great word”? I vote NO.
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Oh, man. Now I have to get Tootie’s out and try it. Doesn’t recognize God but gun? I wonder if their online site suggests how to use that in context.
WTF? I flirt with going out to a shooting range myself some time (I have this weird interest in competitive skeet shooting, but no idea whether I have any talent — no comments from the peanut gallery about my sudden interest in shooting things) and I simply cannot imagine any context in which the word “Gun” should be part of this toy.
Totally bizarre. I would definitely find the consumer e-mail address and complain.
Dave and I were playing with Hannah’s Word Whammer the other day, and it also spells WAR, but it wouldn’t spell… I can’t even remember it, but some totally innocuous three-letter word. We were disturbed.
(Oh, and FUK? No result. Yes, I tried. I’m twelve years old.)
It sounds like it wasn’t the best time to talk with M about guns, but it may not be a bad thing to have that conversation with her in the not-too-distant future. When M starts visiting friends’ houses you may not always know who owns guns and who doesn’t, and it’d be good for her to know what they are and how dangerous they are. We’ll never have guns in our house, but I definitely want our future child(ren) to be prepared if they come across them somewhere else.
didn’t you realize you had bought the NRA approved version! (did you try to spell NRA????)
I just bought this toy for my 4 year old this week. Guess what other word is programmed in there? WAR. I could have spit up my coffee as I was listening to her play with it this morning. Yes, I had to have an exhaustive conversation about WAR with her at 8am. I am not pleased. I had no idea about GUN. Who is programming this thing? Other than the whole programming issue I agree this is a great toy…but gees.
Despite having been in the military myself, we don’t let our son play with toy guns. I will say however, that not knowing anything about guns he really freaked out at school over kids playing with imaginary toy guns and had no idea about the concept (and no, they are not allowed, but boys do these things and if one starts, even the kid from the most liberal family in town is going to join in). So I think it was probably a mistake to not tell him anything about guns at all.
Ha ha. I just realized I commented on a 2 year old post.
Sorry.