The only thing dumber than OddzOn’s rubber chicken candy dispenser has to be United Poultry Concerns’ Franklin Wade who has been fighting a war against the stupid novelty item.
Okay, usually OddzOn produces some of the coolest toys in the world — their Vortex football rocks — but what is the point of a plucked rubber chicken with a Tootsie Roll lollipop sticking out of its throat? Sounds like something they would sell at a place like Spencer Gifts, but Rite Aid carried these things for a while before protests from animal rights activists led them to pull them off the shelves.
Still some convenience stores and other places are selling them and Wade put out a press release today calling for activists to “protest to the store manager if you see this item for sale.”
Which is certainly their right but what exactly was going on in Wade’s mind when he wrote in a UPC press release,
It [the rubber chicken] encourages children and others to regard animal suffering and death — the cruel treatment of chickens especially — as amusing. It has a strong pornographic implication along with cruelty to animals.
Now I do not know about Wade’s lifestyle, but I’ve seen plenty of rubber chickens and none of them exactly turned me on. I guess sex appeal is in the eye of the beholder.
Source:
Stop production, distribution, and sale of cruel and obscene chicken toy. Press release, United Poultry Concerns, November 9, 2000.