grundle

This is mentioned in several amazon.com customer reviews of "The Best of The Electric Company."


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...v=glance&n=130

The Best of The Electric Company

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1 star

What were they thinking????, March 21, 2006

Reviewer: Tamara Malik "Tamara" (Campbell, CA) - See all my reviews

I loved Electric Company as a kid and was so excited when this DVD set came out. What were they thinking though? There is a trailer on Disc 1 for a video called "Undeclared" that talks about sex and condoms. My 4 year old daughter looked at me and said "Mommy... what is a condom?" We didn't get past that. I packed it back up and returned it. I called Shout Factory and they claim that the newest release does not have that trailer on it.

wm lopez

It's 2006 and if Electric Company were made today it would feature that anyway.
Liberalism is always pushing the envolope, be glad it didn't have a same sex marriage segment.

Hokeyboy

Like a broken record...

majorjoe23

I'm guessing that Shout Factory doesn't consider this to be a release aimed at children, but something for the nostalgia market. With all the new releases aimed at kids today, there probably weren't a lot of parents buying a 30 year old show for their kids.

zombiezilla

...deleted by zombiezilla due to technical difficulties.

Scott27

Also, don't forget DVDs always have the "special features not rated" disclaimer on the packaging, as does this one:

That should alert parents that not all the "extras" are suitable for children.

FrancisRizzo3

I ask you...why would you just throw a DVD in for your kid without taking a look at it first? She probably rented the Aristocrats for her kid and wondered where the animated cats were.

Dan Average

Not really. Even Disney movies with kid-friendly special features carry that disclaimer. In an ideal world it would alert parents that they might want to check out the special features before letting their kids watch, but it's not meant as a content advisory and it's used so often I suspect most folks attach no significance to it. And it's pretty bizarre they included it on the Electric Company disc in the first place, since none of the stuff on that release is rated.

Alan Smithee

Guess I have a collector's item then if they took the trailer off the newer copies

I was working at a theater in 1991, and the trailer for Father Of The Bride had a line in it where Steve Martin says "Don't forget to fasten your condom- I mean seatbelt!" That trailer was on a couple G-rated movies but I never heard a single complaint about that, which was surprising since we got silly complaints about a lot of other "inappropriate" trailers being shown with family films.

Trout

That would be classic...

rfduncan

BECAUSE! It is the production company's responsibility to make sure that what grundle's kids watch is appropriate baby-sitting material. Certainly not the consumer.

Sorry, no sympathy from me on this one.

illennium

God forbid a kid should learn something from an educational show.

muttonhead

Don't attack the messenger. Grundle reported what someone else posted on Amazon.

auntiewinnie

You do know that The Electric Company was created by the Children's Television Workshop, the same people responsible for Sesame Street, right? Granted, it was targeted at a slightly older audience than Sesame Street, but I suspect its target audience has a bedtime earlier than 8:30 PM (which was Undeclared's timeslot back in the day, at least here in the Eastern timezone).

Kudos to Shout Factory for realizing they messed up and for trying to correct their error.

EddieN

It is a kid's show. There's a reasonable expectation. The trailers are forced, going right to 'em moments after you drop it in the player. The line in the Undeclared trailer is "We should have sex. Do you have a condom?" No sympathy for Shout Factory.

Drexl

I love how the fact that it is a forced trailer is what's coming back to bite them in the ass.

Alan Smithee

You can hit the Menu button to skip it, but otherwise it does play automatically.

TelocZ

Well, if your kid asks you what a condom is just tell them its something used by heathens dooming them to an eternity of burning in Hell. Also, warn them to never even utter the word "condom" or they will not be able to join you and George W. Bush in the promised land.

Lastdaysofrain

I really didn't think this was a big deal either. This release was aimed at the Nostalgia market and not really for modern kids. I don't really think modern kids with their "Bratz" and anime would even want to watch the Electric Company.

EddieN

They could've pleased both the nostalgia crowd and people looking for educational programs for their young kids by not making such a silly mistake. Forced trailers, skippable or not, are annoying anyway.

Fact: some parents want to avoid sexual content in what their kid's watch before a certain age.

rennervision

Kind of curious - how many of those posting that the mother acted irresponsibly have kids?

awmurray

Well, since it has to get political, you could tell them a condom is what Clinton should have used so he wouldn't have shot a load all over that damn blue dress.

FWIW, I don't believe that trailer should be on the disc either.

fuzzbox

This is all a bit exaggerated, don'tcha think? it's not a CLIP talking about sex and condoms, but rather a scene in a preview. A clip would imply some extended time, and "talking about" would mean just that. What could the total time of this be, maybe 2 seconds? It's not like it was a sex education film or anything...

-jason

PS- should I mention we never had this problem with LaserDiscs, where you had to WANT to watch a trailer, and it was only for the movie you were watching... ;-)