'Soft porn' video ruins Barbie party

04 September 2016 - 02:00 By JAN BORNMAN

From yellow plastic ducks, colouring books and kitchen plasticware to garden gnomes and erm ... porn.Bargain retailer The Crazy Store lived up to its slogan - "Hey, you never know what you might find!" - when a Johannesburg dad bought a DVD lens cleaner, only to find it was a porn movie.To make matters worse, the movie, Girl Refined, began playing in front on Wayne Nunn's two-year-old daughter and several of her friends who were there for a play date and to watch Barbie and the Nutcracker.The company has apologised and pulled the stock off shelves, but Nunn is still furious. The parents are very angry. I can understand that they are upset. I would also be very upset "My daughter had a play date with six friends over at our house. I wanted the girls to watch a movie so they could calm down [but] the DVD player was dirty. I needed to get a lens cleaner so I popped down to Randridge Mall. When I got home I put the lens cleaner in the DVD player and went to unpack the rest of the goods from the bakkie."I was not even gone for five minutes when one of the mothers arrived to pick up their child. What we all saw and heard on the screen disgusted not only the child's mother but also me. I immediately turned off the porn, but it was too late."Nunn, who is a plumber, said he immediately called the store's customer hotline, describing what had happened and asking that the DVD cleaners be removed from the stores' shelves.The following day he went to The Crazy Store at Brightwater Commons in Randburg to buy another lens-cleaning kit and to see if all such products contained similar content."I was shocked. The one I bought then contained full-frontal nudity. It was called China's Hot Babes," he said."I'm a father and selling products like that in a family store is completely unacceptable."Nunn contacted the customer service number again and a manager got in touch. The manager told him they were aware of the problem, but there had not been enough time to remove the products."He said it was only 'soft porn'. I don't care, I don't allow anything like that in my house. I don't even tolerate swearing in my house," Nunn said.He said he had lost friends and business as a result of the mix-up. "The parents are very angry. I can understand that they are upset. I would also be very upset." One of the parents whose child saw the pornographic material was a client of Nunn's."I just want it to be dealt with in an appropriate manner," Nunn said. We regret any anxiety which you may have suffered, however, we cannot be sure of the facts or take our supplier to task without possession of the offending pornographic material, being the DVDs which you allege were purchased from our store All he wanted was for The Crazy Store to reimburse him for the money he had spent on the two cleaning kits, compensate him for the contract he lost as a result of one of the parents finding out about the incident, and an apology from the company.The Crazy Store's marketing manager, Kevin Light, said one company had been supplying their stores with the product since 2011 and this was the first time they had received any complaints about it. "We have pulled all stock from our shelves and will no longer carry this item."Light said he would "never knowingly expose customers to this type of material and [I] apologise that this has happened".He said The Crazy Store had sent a senior manager to Nunn's house to apologise, less than 24 hours after receiving the complaint, and to inform him that all stock had been removed from Crazy Stores countrywide.A letter from the legal department of the Melbro Group (The Crazy Store holding company) to Nunn said: "Please be assured that we have taken immediate steps to investigate your complaint and that we take matters of this nature very seriously."They apologised for the "bizarre occurrence"."We regret any anxiety which you may have suffered, however, we cannot be sure of the facts or take our supplier to task without possession of the offending pornographic material, being the DVDs which you allege were purchased from our store."The letter indicated that Nunn should hand over the DVDs to assist their investigation.Nunn said he had shown the DVD to the manager, but refused to hand it over as the company would "destroy the evidence"."I believe they are trying to cover all of this up."bornmanj@sundaytimes.co.za..

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