At long last, eager fans of Wickedare closing in on their chance to see the screen adaptation for themselves, but the premiere in Los Angeles over the weekend didn’t come without its share of controversy.
To be fair, the controversy doesn’t surround the film itself, but rather around toy company Mattel — and no, we’re not talking about Trixie.
In one of the biggest “and I oop” snafus we’ve seen in some time, it seems somebody on the packaging side of things wasn’t fully paying attention, as they printed a link to wicked.com on the box, rather than the film’s website of wickedmovie.com.
At first glance, this seems like an innocent mistake… until you learn that wicked.com is an adults-only website for the long-established Wicked Pictures porn company, which used to house the legendary Stormy Daniels.
Mind you, the doll is marketed for children aged four and up.
At that, the website for wicked.com has been around since 1993, which makes this even more embarrassing for the company.
Following the major oopsie, a spokesperson for the company released a statement saying they were “made aware of a misprint on the packaging of the Mattel Wicked collection dolls, primarily sold in the U.S., which intended to direct consumers to the official WickedMovie.com landing page” and that they “deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this. Parents are advised that the misprinted, incorrect website is not appropriate for children.”
If you’re already an owner of one of these dolls, they added, “Consumers who already have the product are advised to discard the product packaging or obscure the link and may contact Mattel Customer Service for further information.”
By the end of Sunday afternoon, Target had pulled their entire line of Mattel dolls—fashion, singing, deluxe collectibles, and all—from their shelves, and none of these dolls are available at any other retailers.
While some people think this was done on purpose and this is proof that we’re “still attacking the children,” (sure, Jan) others view this as just a major oversight. But really, whomst among us?
Either way, it’s unlikely to do anything to sway audiences from checking out the film for themselves when it drops on November 22.
In the meantime, have a scroll for some reactions.