Mammoth Blog

OWASSO - When Gary Rofkahr from Owasso heard there was a baby doll on local store shelves that said, "Islam is the Light," he didn't believe it.

He bought the Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Cuddle and Coo doll to see for himself and he was shocked to hear the words, "Islam is the Light" among other baby gibberish including "Mama."

"I have a 1-year-old granddaughter," he said. "It makes me mad that someone is trying to indoctrinate our children with an innocent toy."

He called Fisher Price to complain. He was told they were aware of the problem and would gladly refund his money.

"I told them I didn't want my money back, I wanted them to pull these dolls off the shelf," he said. "They told me they can't pull an item just because a customer requests it, they have to have corporate direction. I told them I would get corporate direction and get back to them. I told them I'm from a town of 30,000 people with 46 churches in it and I know someone who attends each one. I'm going to everyone I know to tell them about this and I'm going to call Target and Wal-Mart and see if we can pull this doll off the shelves."

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"We've pulled it," said Mitzi Tatowicz, co-manager of the Owasso Wal-Mart.

She said Wal-Mart had heard about the doll and its recording several days ago and pulled the doll from the local store. Apparently, overnight the dolls had been put back on the shelves, but Tatowicz said "We've voluntarily pulled them and believe they shouldn't be on our shelves."

Local Target officials refused to comment on whether the dolls were still on shelves and directed the Owasso Reporter to a corporate media relations phone number that went directly to voicemail. At around 11 a.m. Wednesday, an Owasso Reporter employee purchased one of the dolls, which are made in China, at the Target in Smith Farm Marketplace for $19.99. UPDATE - As of 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 10, an Owasso Reporter employee confirmed several of the dolls were still on store shelves at the Owasso Target.

Upon further investigation, the Owasso Reporter came across some Web sites where others have discovered this doll and also claim she utters the words, "Satan is King." When the Owasso Reporter contacted Fisher Price to ask for official comment, they were redirected to a Mattel representative. When an employee called the number, they received a voicemail message that directed them to an email.

The voicemail message and email had not been returned by press time. The email did receive an Out of Office AutoReply that said, "If you are consumer and have a question about a product, please email our Consumer Relations department directly at service@mattel.com." The Fisher Price inquiry number on the doll's box is 1-800-524-8697.

Check for updates of this situation and don't forget to listen to our attached video to see a video of the baby doll and hear what she has to say. Due to the poor sound quality of the doll, the recording is slightly hard to hear.

Editor's note: The Owasso Reporter has chosen to only play the video of the phrase the doll utters that sounds like "Islam is the light." Video of the phrase where the doll sounds like she utters "Satan in the king, Mama" is very hard to distinguish and cannot be truly judged through a video on the Internet. Therefore, we have chosen not to run this part of the video.

Update - Reporter Amanda Morgan-Scott received a reply from her email to Mattel. The email has been copied and pasted in full below.

As a result of a recent news report regarding our Little Mommy Cuddle 'n Coo dolls saying an inappropriate phrase, we immediately undertook a thorough investigation to fully understand the issue. A summary of our findings include:

*The Little Mommy Cuddle 'n Coo dolls feature realistic baby sounds including sweet cooing, giggling and baby babble with no real sentence structure. *The only scripted word that the doll actually says is "mama." There is a sound that may resemble something close to the word "night, right, or light." All of the other sounds are baby sounds with no real words or sentence structure.

*We have found that if told to listen for a particular phrase, you may hear something similar due to the power of suggestion.

*Actual sounds may be imprecise due to sound compression played through the very tiny inexpensive toy speakers from the doll.

As a result of these findings, we remain confident in the high quality standards of our Little Mommy Cuddle 'n Coo dolls. If any consumer has any questions or concerns regarding any Mattel toys, they may contact our Mattel consumer relations center at 800/524-TOYS (8697), and we will be happy to assist them. We take each call from our consumers very seriously and do our best to help address their concerns.

UPDATE: At 2:19 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, Target had to call police when a customer asked for the Little Mommy doll to be pulled from their shelves and the store refused. The police report says, "Subject came in last night and demanded for us to remove some merchandise from the racks due to inappropriate language. The company did not remove item." Source>>>