Dominic and Michelle Luciano of Plainfield were sure they had found the perfect Christmas gift for their 2-year-old son, who loves playing police officer or firefighter.
Instead, they may have inadvertently dropped an f-bomb on him.
The police version of the Elite Operations Role Play Set–with a talking belt that Dominic Jr. found under the tree Christmas morning and has worn almost every waking moment since–plays a recording that sounds like it contains the expletive.
“[Expletive]!” a child’s recorded voice seems to shout. “I don’t want to have to use my nightstick.”
It is supposed to say: “Stop! I don’t want to have to use my nightstick.”
Now officials of the company that makes the toy speculate that the slip of the tongue identified by the Lucianos, and convincingly repeated for a reporter, is a digital glitch.
After previous complaints, the company had modified the recording. But one of the earlier versions made its way to the Lucianos, and they said their son is repeating the naughty word, as he did last week while playing a potty-mouthed police officer in their front yard.
“He says it,” his mother said. “I tell him it’s a bad word. He doesn’t understand why it’s a bad word or why he can’t say it. So, it’ll still pop out.”
Dominic Luciano Sr. happens to be a Westchester police officer.
“Guys at work actually were saying, at least they’re making toys that are realistic,” he said. “A lot of them want to go out and buy it now.”
The couple said they want Toys “R” Us to pull the play sets from shelves and provide an explanation.
Representatives from Toys “R” Us and Tek Nek Toys International, which makes the play set exclusively for the retailer, said last week that the purported obscenity probably results from a malfunctioning computer chip.
“We would never, as a company making toys for that age range of children or any age range, use inappropriate language,” said Michelle Perea, product and marketing manager for Tek Nek, based in Southlake, Texas.
Tek Nek manufactures about 15,000 chips at a time in a factory in China, Perea said.
“There’s no way someone would slip in one chip or manipulate one chip,” she added.
Nevertheless, after getting two similar complaints earlier last year, Tek Nek edited out the word “Stop!” from the recorded warning in all of the sets manufactured since November, Perea said.
The Lucianos actually chuckle about the inappropriate word spouting from their son’s play police belt. But they’re a little less amused by his ability to repeat it.
The Lucianos’ Christmas nightmare began the week before the holiday, when they left their three sons with grandparents and went shopping at the Toys “R” Us in Joliet. They found the toy on sale for $16.99.
The set includes a toy helmet, binoculars, radio, flashlight, handcuffs, badge and, among other items, a nightstick that slips into the belt. When the nightstick is removed or returned to the belt, a recorded child’s voice shouts above the din of an unruly crowd.
The Lucianos were unable to reach the nightstick while the toy was in its packaging on the shelf. But they pressed buttons on a modified belt buckle and heard recordings: a siren, a confirmation that the streets are safe, an urgent call to help.
“Everything that he plays is police and fireman,” Michelle Luciano said. “So when we saw it and it talked, we were like, `Wow, that’s going to be the toy.'”
After opening the gift Christmas morning, Dominic Jr. didn’t want to open anything else, his parents said. His brother Daniel helped him don the gear.
The next afternoon, while Michelle Luciano was in the kitchen and her sons were playing in the den, she thought she heard a discouraging word.
“They were running around, then I heard it and I thought, `Nah,'” she said. When her husband arrived home from work, she played it for him.
“I laughed,” he said. “I could not believe it. I was like, `Get out of here.’ I called one of the guys I work with and I played it for him over the phone. He couldn’t believe it either.”
Michelle Luciano called the store, where an employee directed her to call the toll-free customer service line. A representative told her to return the toy, which she has yet to do. Her son is too infatuated with it.
Toys “R” Us has sold more than 100,000 of the police sets in the three years since Tek Nek started manufacturing them, said Kathleen Waugh, the retailer’s public relations director.
Tek Nek has not received other complaints about toys it has manufactured uttering inappropriate language, Perea said.
But at least two other toys on the market have elicited criticism last year, including the Oozinator, a Hasbro-manufactured Super Soaker water gun that spurts globs of a goo mixed with water.
The popular Bratz dolls, made by MGA Entertainment, have drawn fire for dressing infant-looking dolls too suggestively. And a family from the Miami area contends that a Bratz doll named Jade sings obscene lyrics.
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tgregory@tribune.com
