Look, we all know Barbie looks at porn. She’s an adult woman, it’s no big deal. But it’s maybe more of an issue when she starts leaving tabs open all over the merch sold to kids. This is what’s happened on the boxes for two Wicked movie tie-in Barbie dolls.
It’s all thanks to a good-old-fashioned mix-up. Two new Barbie dolls have been released, to coincide with the imminent release of the movie version of hit musical Wicked, based on the characters of Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West (Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo). Each is released in the traditional cardboard box, and as ever, it’s covered in all sorts of tiny writing almost no one ever reads. However, those who did read the fine print on the new dolls got quite a shock when they followed the URL listed for the products.
It’s easy to see how the mistake was made. The address on the boxes is “www.wicked.com,” which makes sense, right? Except, that takes you to porn site Wicked, owned by Dutch company Digigamma, a company that says it “specializes in running and managing high risk e-commerce businesses.”
Presumably the intention had been to point people toward Universal’s www.wickedmovie.com, but someone at Mattel assumed the production company had done a better job of scooping up URLs.
The Wicked porn site must have already been doing a roaring trade in mistaken traffic, long before the Barbie goof. The musical has been an astonishing hit since 2003, sitting on Broadway and touring worldwide ever since. The movie itself will have added to that, with early word suggesting it’s going to be very good. But Barbie has pushed it into the mainstream, with news sites jumping on the error.
Mattel told The Hollywood Reporter that it “deeply regrets” the incident, and the doll was removed from sale in stores like Target, Walmart and Kohl’s by the end of Sunday, the 10th. They’re also gone from Amazon, although the UK version of the retailer still has listings, albeit with no option to buy.
Those boxed dolls are going to be worth a fortune. If you bought one, for god’s sake, don’t let your child get their hands on it! Pack that thing in silk scarves. They’re already listed on eBay for anything from $100 to $2,000.
The Wicked movie is out November 22, released alongside Gladiator II, in what some are hoping will be another Barbenheimer phenomenon.
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