This ‘Trolls’ Doll Has Been Recalled After QAnon Conspiracists Claimed It Promotes Child Abuse
The doll's sitting sensor has angered QAnon conspiracists, who believe its "normalising grooming".
Over the weekend, toy company Hasbro decided to pull their popular ‘Trolls World Tour Giggle and Sing Poppy’ doll off shelves, following claims that it promoted child abuse.
The claims started when Utah mother, Jamie Cornaby, posted a video to Facebook examining her daughter’s Giggle and Sing doll on August 2.
According to the box, Poppy’s tummy button makes 10 phrases and sounds. But Cornaby pointed out that there was actually an extra button not listed on the packaging that she discovered after hearing new sounds. This button is located on the doll’s crotch and makes various gasping and giggling sounds, something that Cornaby believes is “grooming” children.
“Stuff has been going on in the world about sex trafficking in kids and things that are thrown in our kids’ faces to groom them,” the mother said in the video. “This is wrong. This button… makes a gasping sound when you touch her privates. To me, it sounds like sexual sounds and it’s so disturbing.”
“As a parent it makes me quite mad,” Cornaby ended her video.
While Cornaby’s original video did gain some attention, the video didn’t go viral until QAnon conspiracy theorist, @redpillbabe, posted it to her 120,000 Instagram followers.
As pointed out by Rolling Stone, @redpillbabe’s Instagram bio features the popular QAnon phrase #WW1WGA — “where we go one, we go all” — along with the words “Latina for Trump” and “Q sent me”. Her repost of the Poppy video itself also included hashtags that referenced some favourite QAnon theories like #PizzagateIsReal and #OperationMockingbird.
Along with @redpillbabe’s repost going viral, Jessica McManis — another concerned parent and QAnon theorist who uses #SaveTheChildren and #PedoGate consistently on her Facebook page — started a Change.org petition to demand Hasbro recall the Giggle and Sing doll.
“Our society is conditioning our children to think pedophilia is ok. This toy needs to be removed from our stores,” the petition reads. “What will this toy make our innocent, impressionable children think? That it’s fun when someone touches your private area? That pedophilia and child molestation are ok? It’s not ok! It’s not fun!”
Look at this Trolls Poppy doll. It gasps and giggles when you push the button on its private area. They’re conditioning our children to think pedophilia is ok. To make them think when someone touches your private it should be fun 😡 It’s not ok!
Sign 👉 https://t.co/vCoVocr4y9 pic.twitter.com/g9DWPCzWKE— Jessica McManis (@JessiMcmanis) August 5, 2020
After the video went viral and the petition gained over 450,000 signatures, the claims about the Giggle and Sing Poppy doll were debunked by a Hasbro spokesperson, who explained that the sensor was merely designed to go off when the doll was in a sitting position.
“This feature was designed to react when the doll was seated, but we recognise the placement of the sensor may be perceived as inappropriate,” Hasbro SVP of Global Communications Julie Duffy said to various outlets. “This was not intentional and we are happy to provide consumers with a replacement Poppy doll of similar value through our Consumer Care team. We are in the process of removing the item for purchase.”
As a result, independent fact-checkers marked both Jamie Cornaby’s original video and @redpillbabe’s repost as “partly-false” because the Poppy doll button placement was “not intentional” and “not designed to groom young children for pedophiles”.
Naturally, this fact-checking angered the mother who originally posted the video. “Fact-checked??? How is my video/personal experience deemed untrue?,” Jamie Cornaby wrote in an update to her video on Facebook. “Give me a BREAK. I won’t be silent.”
Seems like the #Trollsdoll design was to make the button press when you sit the doll down.
A fucking stupid design choice, but saying it's trying to normalize grooming is a huge S T R E C H
— Delycan (@DC__Chronicles) August 7, 2020
But despite Cornaby’s claims that there was “nothing about the [bottom] button on the box”, the product description for Giggle and Sing Poppy, which was available on the Walmart site before the doll was pulled from shelves, shows that the sensor was always common knowledge. Plus, the back of the Poppy box shows the doll sitting and making noises in the top-right corner.
After listing off all the features the main button can do like three different giggles, singing ‘Trolls Just Want To Have Fun’ and saying five phrases, the product description notes that: “When you sit her down, she makes other funny sounds, too!” However, instead of defending their product decisions, Hasbro caved in understood why people may have felt the sensor placement was “inappropriate”, but called the move “not intentional”.
While child sex abuse and grooming are huge problems that do exist, it’s unlikely that the toy company went out of their way to create a doll with the sole purpose of normalising grooming. But by pulling the ‘Trolls World Tour Giggle and Sing Poppy’ off shelves so quickly, many QAnon conspiracy theorists are now celebrating the newfound “power” they now have.
“This is why Q says We Are The News now. We have the power to stop the sexual exploitation and pedophile grooming of our children,” popular QAnon conspiracist Liz Crokin shared to her 277,000 Instagram followers. “Even with the Fake News & Big Tech censorship, we cannot be stopped. There’s too many of us who are awake — keep fighting patriots! God Wins!”