Why Does Toys 'R' Us Promote 'M' Rated Games?

So anyway, yesterday I went to Toys 'R' Us for the first time in 10 years to pick up some Pokemon items since they were selling a Chikorita plushy that you can only get at Toys 'R' Us.

I go in and see a huge color display on not only Call of Duty but also Grand Theft Auto V. I'm not trying to do a "think of the children" type thing here but I'm just wondering. We've been having a big stink in the US because kids are getting a hold of M rated games and this isn't really talked about.

As much as I feel, I think kids should not be playing M rated games (of course, that is for the parents to decide but I think they have been doing a crappy job of it too). After all, R rated movies are not kid friendly and are not sold at Toys R Us yet a game like GTA V is allowed. However, that wasn't even the worst of it.

I also find a Call of Duty: Ghosts child size backpack among the Barbie and Cars backpacks. Am I missing something here? I thought the gaming companies have said their number 1 goal is to keep kids away from M rated games yet they are allowing the sale of child backpacks to promote the game. I mean, it is clear that they are trying to promote the games towards kids here. It is also not just one game company doing it after all.

I just find it extremely odd and uneasy that a store that promotes toys to children is selling games that are suppose to be for adults. I know it all comes down to the all mighty dollar since if Toys R Us didn't sell GTA V then they wouldn't have gotten a slice of the billion dollar pie.

Toys and games of different genre are being sold because they are there to be played with. It's up to the parents to whether or not let their children play the games.

It's the parent's fault on letting their kids play M-rated games, not the store's.
The store is there just to sell games and toys.

It comes back to how much profit a company could make. It's an unethical thing to do, because with what they are doing, they're indirectly trying to get these under-the-age-to-play kids to want to play.

But it's up to the parents whether or not their kids should be allowed to play or not. We have no rights to actually say their parents that what they are doing is wrong. I mean, I played SA when I was in middle school, and it turned out I wasn't gonna be a mass murderer.

Likely because they consider video games as "toys", so it makes sense (and a ton of profit for expensive ones) to sell them.

As with any retailer, though, I am sure they must card for M rated games.

I have no problem at all if the parents want the games for the kids and it can be a place for them since they ID it. I'm more talking about how they are activity promoting the said game towards kids.

When I went in, there was a huge colorful display CoD at the front of the store, like a full section right next to the Skylanders items, in that section had not only guides for it, but child shirts, child backpacks, and Lego figures of CoD & Halo sitting next to them. When the retailers and game makers are stating on record that their goal is to keep these games out of kids hands yet promote the items like this in front of kids, the kids are going to want to play them. It is a bit hypercritical of them and it feels like they are activity making the game promotions "forbidden fruit" to the kids plus how the industry is doing a piss poor job of regulating itself.

They need to keep the toys at Toys R Us and the games at GameStop. It's BS that these companies keep feeding off of kid's desire to play violent video games. The Halo, and now Call of Duty, Mega Bloks series is getting more and more annoyingly like the games. Just the other day at Target I was working and a parent was buying a GTA V game for her SEVEN YEAR OLD SON. I had to explain the extent of violence to this customer (such as the Trevor rape scene) and in the end she still bought it because the kid was begging for it.

This is the main problem. The companies that make and promote these games want as much money as they can. The only way to do this is to maximize there market audience. It's kinda sad when you look at it, but this is the world we live in today :/

It would be a foolish loss of income to not sell them. it also encourages people to come in for it specifically, and buy other thing at the same time, and vice versa. i suppose it could be likened to the concept of the impulse items near the cash register. "so long as you're here anyway, maybe you'll buy this too".

I'm a bit different..

As long as there is someone there, who properly understand the subject matter of the content itself, and can explain it to the child, I don't think anything is "not for kids". With parents and a proper and informative explanation, porn can be a learning tool for instance. You'd just have to get pass the stigma's associated but I digress.

OT: Call of Duty embodies a type of message the US government has been selling to the citizens for years in a much more successful manner. Patriotism, xenophobia, strong self(US) interest, interest in military and guns. "Good guys(US) killing bad men(the world) with guns", to shorten. And most parents don't catch the subliminal messages, they only see it as "US military killing bad guys", in which we have been conditioned to believe that everyone our military kills is a "bad guy".

So a lot of parents will buy these for kids. Toys 'R' Us is a retail store before anything else, there main concern is profit. With publishers, it is the same thing. While the publisher can chose who to sell to (Toy 'r' us) they can't control who the retailer sells too. Toy's 'R' Us realizes how well both series sells to children, so they will stock up on the titles for profit, knowing kids will ask for them if they can see them displayed.

As for the backpacks, the publishers most likely sold the name to a company that produces that kind of merchandise. They can pull the "we don't control who the manufactures' retail stores sell to".

I think one of the points OP is trying to make is that manufacturers are making these children's CoD backpacks, etc. when, in theory, they shouldn't even be playing the game in the first place. It's naive, obviously, but the existence of the backpacks is kind of like them saying, "Yeah, we know these kids are playing these M-rated games so we'll make kids merchandise for it."

It is unethical to sell M rated or such games to minors but not illegal in many countries. In America, video games are classified as expressive works of art and thus are protected by the first amendment.

So it comes down to what the store wants to do, whether they want to market and sell it to children or restrict the sale of such items.

Thank you, I have a bad way of explaining things sometimes but yeah that was my major point.

Toys r us does not care about protecting children, it is simply a company that wishes to maximize it profit, and it that means having adds for mature games, so be it. We live in a captiolist society, so weather you like it or not, they can sell what they please.