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Nickelodeon Website Named 'Worst Toy of the Year'

addicting games wins
If you're still blaming 'Duck Hunt' for the fact that your kid grew up to be a serial killer, wait till you get a load of the bloodthirsty games Nickelodeon is now marketing to today's generation of miscreants. The Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has awarded Nickelodeon's AddictingGames.com with the dubious title of 'worst toy of the year,' after tallying nearly 5,000 online votes for the annual Toys Oppressive and Destructive to Young Children (Toady) "competition."

In her justification of the organization's decision, campaign director Susan Linn argued that the network "promotes violent and sexualized games to young children," adding that the violence on the website "shows how little regard the company has for their well-being." The campaign took particular issue with a game called 'Perry the Sneak,' which it describes as a "series where gamers take the role of a peeping Tom trying to catch revealing glimpses of naked women showering" (or, as we like to call it, "the Internet"). Nickelodeon declined to comment on the award, probably because it was too busy thinking of ways to contort the malleable minds of America's youth.

The New York Times takes a refreshingly more circumspect perspective on the issue, acknowledging the difficulty in defending games that encourage kids to "shoot kittens out of cannons onto a row of metal spikes," yet pointing out that such morbid games comprise only a small portion of the entertainment available on Nickelodeon's site. And, since AddictingGames hasn't changed much over the course of the past few years (Thankfully, since we rely on the site for our Flash games feature), it's a bit puzzling that the organization's voters would choose to smack a scarlet letter on it now. But if the campaign wants to single out games that are destroying children, so be it. We'll just grab a bowl of popcorn and wait for the results of 'Worst Parent of the Year' to roll in. Because if we're going to comprehensively treat a decidedly double-edged issue, it would only make sense to smear both sides of the coin, right? [From: The New York Times]

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