And This Is Why I'll Never Have Kids

Unlike many of my fellow students, who probably only looked at The Onion's article list for 10 picoseconds and chose the most recent articles, I've followed The Onion for years now, so I'm going to choose a very old article from them. An article so old in fact, it's even older than me.

The article in question, Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids, is generally considered to be one of The Onion's most offensive articles and is partly what helped to make them well-known due to the controversy it caused.

Just looking at the title alone makes it clear why the article was so disliked, as it calls 3 dead kids "stupid". This immediately serves to establish both the tone and satire of the article, as not only does it show how the article will talk badly about these dead kids, but also sets up the satire in the article. Since society normally puts children up on a pedestal and gives them the stereotype of being innocent and unable to be judged, this article clearly challenges that idea by going right ahead and calling the children "stupid".

Going into the article itself, it starts off the with the context of "Wizco Toys of Montclair, NJ, recalled 245,000 Aqua Assault RoboFighters Monday". This serves to establish context for the situation, and also makes it seem like a professional and official article by providing information and context like a real article does, before immediately undercutting that audience expectation with satire, "after three dumb kids managed to kill themselves playing with the popular toy, ruining the fun for everybody else." 

By referring to the kids as "dumb" and blaming them for "ruining the fun for everybody else", it immediately shows the main satire of this article, satirizing people attacking and blaming victims of tragedies and focusing on how it affects the alive people and not the ones who suffered.

There are so many instances of the article satirizing this behavior of blaming the victims of tragedies throughout the entire article that if I went in-depth on each instance of irony, I would essentially being copying and pasting the entire article, so here's just some of my favorite examples from the piece.

• The president of Wizco refers to the toy as awesome, which is ironic since a professional and sophisticated CEO wouldn't be expected to use a term as childish and silly as "awesome."
• A paramedic saying that "'poor Wizco's probably going to go bankrupt because of this shit.'" This attacks those who don't focus on the actual victim of a tragedy as if they're not deserving of sympathy. Obviously, the multi-million-dollar corporation is the victim here and not the dead child.
• The article calls the toy an "incredibly cool device that could shoot both plastic missiles and long jets of water, as well as maneuver over the ground on retractable wheels." This makes it sound like the person writing the article is genuinely excited about the toy and also thinks it's cool, not only portraying a sense of bias from the writer since they're biased towards the toy, but also parodying how the serious and credible journalist is this giddy and excited over a children's toy.
• The government official who had to force the recall of the toy believing that three deaths is enough to force a recall of the toy, despite also later referring to the children who died as "'morons who deserved what they got.'" This is such a great moment of irony because the reader wouldn't expect the person who thinks the victims of the toy deserved it and are morons, to also recall the toy if they think it's unjustified to recall it.

There's also the entire paragraph of comedic gold that is "'I've heard some pretty stupid shit in my time, but that has to take the cake," said Dr. Anderson Hunt, the attending physician. "Why would any kid think he could fire plastic missiles up his nose and expect them to come out his belly button? There's no point in feeling bad about this child's demise, because the deck was obviously stacked against him from the start. What we should feel bad about is the fact that because of him, millions of other children will no longer get to fire the RoboFighter's super-cool Devastator Missiles or soak their friends with its FunFoam WaterBlasters.'"

There's so much humor and irony in this paragraph, like the doctor himself who had to treat a dying patient also referring to the patient's ideas as "pretty stupid shit". Or the idea that the audience shouldn't feel bad about the child's death because he was clearly going to die from how stupid he was already, thus satirizing both people who don't care about the victims of tragedies or feel bad about them, and people who attack and blame the victims of tragedies for their own deaths as if it's the victims’ fault. 

There's also the complete ignorance of the child's death and instead focusing on people who weren't involved in the tragedy and are barely impacted by it in any way.

The entire article just has so much irony, all to parody and attack those who ignore or blame the victims of tragedies, especially those who make it about themselves or people who weren't impacted by the tragedy at all. And despite all of its irony and parody, the article is actually mostly sardonic to attack and criticize the people who do blame victims for their own demise or ignore their deaths and focus on unrelated victims.

However, even with the overwhelming irony and clear satirical tone, this article got The Onion in a lot of trouble and controversy back in the day. This, making it one of the most important articles in The Onion's history, as it made The Onion switch over to more humorous and absurd satire that focused less commonly focused on touchy subjects like dead kids. Despite that, this remains one of my favorite articles they ever made because of just how humorous and ironic it is.