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Retail giant Wal-Mart is the world’s largest public company, and whether or not you’re a fan of shopping at the House that Sam Walton Built, you’ve got to admit that the store stocks just about everything. But not quite, though. There are a number of things that Wal-Mart has banned from its stores at some point. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
1. Barbie’s Pregnant Pal
In 2002 Wal-Mart cleared its shelves of Barbie’s pregnant friend, Midge. The doll, which featured a removable stomach complete with deliverable baby, was part of Mattel’s “Happy Family” set that also included her husband and son. However, customers complained about seeing pregnancy enter into Barbie’s universe, and Wal-Mart pulled all of the Happy Family sets from its stores.
2. This Underwear:
That’s right: panties that say, “Who needs credit cards…” on the front and “When you have Santa” on the rear. The undergarments started showing up in Wal-Mart’s juniors departments in December 2007 and quickly started an Internet firestorm over the perceived message of using Kris Kringle as a sugar daddy. While the same joke would be fairly harmless on, say, a t-shirt, many women felt that its placement on underwear added a sinister sexual undertone aimed at adolescent girls. In response to the public outcry, Wal-Mart pulled the offending underthings from its shelves.
3. Confederate-Themed Barbecue Sauce
You may remember the raucous debate about whether the Confederate flag should be flown over the South Carolina State House in 2000, but you probably didn’t know the battle spilled over into Wal-Mart’s grocery aisles. At the time, 90 Southern Wal-Marts were marketing a mustard-based sauce created by Maurice Bessinger, an outspoken advocate of flying the Rebel flag over the State House and owner of eight Piggie Park restaurants.
During the flag debate, Bessinger replaced all American flags at his eateries with Confederate flags, a move that Wal-Mart saw as objectionable and needlessly provocative, so the company yanked his sauces from its stores. (Don’t feel too bad for Bessinger, though; it took nothing less than a 1976 Supreme Court intervention to force him to serve African Americans in his restaurants.)
4. A Shirt That Read “Someday a Woman Will Be President”
In 1995 a Miami-area Wal-Mart pulled this shirt from its racks after consumer complaints. The shirt, which featured the character Margaret from Dennis the Menace, ran afoul of “the company’s family values,” so it went back to the stock rooms. Eventually more reasonable, non-Stone-Age heads prevailed, and the shirt made it back onto the shelves after three months in limbo.
5. Workplace Romance
In November 2005, German courts ruled that Wal-Mart could not ban all workplace romance at its German stores. The retailer had unsuccessfully tried to force all employees to sign off on a 28-page code of ethics that included prohibitions on “lustful glances and ambiguous jokes” and “sexually meaningful communication of any type.”
6. An Al Snow Action Figure
In 1999 Wal-Mart put the brakes on selling an action figure featuring WWE hardcore wrestler Al Snow. Snow’s wrestling gimmick at the time involved walking to the ring while carrying and talking to a mannequin head. Naturally, his action figure came with the head as an accessory, but two professors at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University saw the inclusion of the head as a problem. They told the press that by selling the action figure society was “normalizing violent treatment of women. We are telling little boys that this is acceptable behavior.” (Please, parents: don’t ever give your sons the impression that carrying and talking to part of a mannequin is acceptable.) Following this high-profile outcry, Wal-Mart quit stocking the Al Snow action figure.
7. Megan Fox
The Wal-Mart in the starlet’s hometown supposedly banned her for life following a teenage shoplifting bust. A 2008 report on contactmusic.com alleged that Fox got the heave-ho after being caught swiping a $7 tube of lip gloss during a rebellious shoplifting spree, which earned her the lifetime ban.
8. Lad Mags
If you’re a frisky 17-year-old looking for the latest Maxim, Stuff, or FHM, don’t head to Wal-Mart. Since 2003 the store has banned the so-called “lad mags” due to their racy photo spreads and bawdy editorial content.
It’s actually not all the uncommon for Wal-Mart to give a single issue of a magazine an ax, too. In the past, the store has refused to stock issues of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition and a 2001 issue of InStyle that featured an artistic nude shot of Kate Hudson.
9. Music
Wal-Mart has long declined to stock any music bearing a parental advisory warning for explicit lyrical content, but the company’s fastidiousness with regards to music doesn’t stop there. When the store carried Nirvana’s album In Utero, it changed the song title “Rape Me” to the less offensive (and less coherent) “Waif Me.” Similarly, the store declined to carry Prince’s 1988 album Lovesexy because of a fairly tame cover that featured a nude photo of the artist.
10. Superbad DVDs
When the comedy Superbad hit store shelves in 2007, it came with a little extra: a replica of the fake Hawaii driver’s license used by the self-dubbed “McLovin’.” Most movie fans would simply see this freebie as a little reminder of one of the movie’s funniest scenes, but Hawaiian authorities simply felt it was a fake ID. Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann requested that Wal-Mart pull the DVD from store shelves across the state, and the retailer quickly complied.
11. Cuban Pajamas
Wal-Mart’s Canadian stores found themselves in a pickle in 1997. The Canadian subsidiary had begun selling Cuban-made pajamas at eight bucks a pop across our neighbor to the North, which enraged both the company’s home office and the U.S. Treasury Department.
The stores quickly pulled the offending PJ’s, which led to a second problem: this action may have violated a Canadian law that forbids abiding by the American embargo of Cuba. After the Ottawa government pointed out that Wal-Mart could face a million-dollar fine for pulling the sleepwear from its shelves, the Canadian Wal-Marts reversed the ban after one week. [Underwear & T-shirt images courtesy of Feministing.com.]
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Comments (42)
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i think houston walmarts (maybe even all over texas) have banned memin penguin cartoon books because they’re perceived as racist.
posted by casual_observer on 9-17-2009 at 3:48 pm
So the pregnant Barbie was in no way offensive to \Family Values\ because she had a husband and first child doll? I thought by 2002 we had stopped regarding pregnancy as embarrassing and taboo, as if it were a \condition\ to be quiet about…1802, sure, that’s how it was regarded, but not 2002.
Should the mommies buying Barbie’s for their kids hide their pregnant stomachs as they expect a new addition to their family?
What kind of a message does it send young girls that pregnancy is shameful? It’s a perfectly normal part of life, sexuality, and hey, it’s how you got here!
posted by Lilly on 9-17-2009 at 4:27 pm
Add me to the list! I was thrown out of Wal-Mart for rollerblading up and down the aisles when I was 14. I tried to go back the next day on foot and was told I’d been banned for life! I didn’t think the low level manager who told me that had banning privileges, so I started going back a week or two later. No incidents since.
posted by Alex on 9-17-2009 at 4:34 pm
Also banned was the Sheryl Crow self-titled album for the lyric, “watch our children while they kill each other with a gun they bought at WAL*Mart. . . ”
I can see why they banned penguins for racism. Everything is so black and white with them.
What?
posted by emily on 9-17-2009 at 4:39 pm
“I can see why they banned penguins for racism. Everything is so black and white with them.”
I think that might be the funniest comment I have seen since I started reading m_f! Of course, the following “what?” makes it even better.
I also agree with Lilly… pregnancy is a part of life and, nowadays, sometimes older children are even present for the new child’s birth.
posted by Sarah in CA on 9-17-2009 at 5:17 pm
so walmart is banning things that arent “family friendly” and I assume the sex lubes my wife and I buy are just dandy for the kids to play with… after all it does taste like cherry
posted by jeremiah on 9-17-2009 at 5:28 pm
I was also banned for life from a walmart. I’m not going to go into the details of why but lets just say its not as hard to do as one would think.
posted by Ryan on 9-17-2009 at 5:28 pm
Also, I doubt they banned the pregnant barbie because of any perception of pregnancy as shameful. But its probably because, while the doll may have been sold as part of a set with a husband and child, those dolls are often played with individually. Little girls identify with the dolls and probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish that this particular barbie doll was at a later stage in life when they probably usually think of their dolls as being teenager-ish. You can see the problem with little girls identifying with a pregnant doll that they conceptualize as a teenager.
posted by Ryan on 9-17-2009 at 5:32 pm
nice explanation about the barbie thing ryan, could be, but it is walmart, do they ahve enough brains in their company to come up with an inteligent answer like you just came up with? probly notremount julius
posted by jeremiah on 9-17-2009 at 6:18 pm
They sell “Do It Yourself Divorce Kits” at the walmarts I’ve been too. How’s that for family values?
posted by Roxie on 9-17-2009 at 6:19 pm
I love Emily’s comment! Too funny!
I think I saw the link on MF on someone else’s post but let me pass it along anyway for those who may have missed it.
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com
(and yes some very rude stuff, but mostly funny. definitely not site for the kids though)
posted by Hyacinth on 9-17-2009 at 6:38 pm
I guess it’s a corporate standard to ban people “for life”. Myself and 3 co-workers were fired and banned for life while working at WalMart in high school.
This whole time I thought they just took our candy bar and Scope stealing ring as a serious cartel.
posted by Marty on 9-17-2009 at 6:47 pm
I actually owned one of the pregnant Midge dolls. I even had her husband Alan. I always figured they stopped making it because either the baby was a choking hazard or the magnets to connect the stomach were.
posted by Samantha on 9-17-2009 at 7:46 pm
We loved Midge! We had two of her…though come to think of it, we didn’t buy the dads so we had two pregnant Midge dolls without a daddy. Sounds like a Maury Povich episode.
posted by Nicole on 9-17-2009 at 9:18 pm
Wal-mart has VERY strict rules about which magazine publications can be displayed and sold in their stores. Certain teen magazines have revised their entire content structure just so they don’t lose Wal-mart as a distributor, because they make up such a huge percent of overall sales in the teen/tween markets. On the other hand, there are certain magazines that you’ll never find on Wal-mart’s shelves because they refuse to comply with the rules.
posted by Stephanie on 9-17-2009 at 11:50 pm
Wal-Mart is not the only place that banned Maurice Bessinger . EVERYONE pulled his sauce. The only place in Columbia and I assume the south that you can get it is in his restaurants. As long as I can remember he’s always flown the Confederate flag. Don’t know if his BBQ is any good, I will never eat in his restaurants. Maurice Bessinger is pretty much a raving lunatic, he also had Nazi propaganda pamphlets in his restaurants during the Confederate flag debacle.
posted by kani on 9-18-2009 at 12:25 am
I know it’s always brought up when one’s talking about Wal-mart’s censorship policies, but I still have to point out how ridiculous it is that Wal-mart doesn’t allow CDs with parental advisories to be sold in it’s stores, yet sells the most violent and profane movies and video games out there. It’s OK to hear profane language in a movie, but in a CD? No way!
It’s hypocritical, and it’s why I generally don’t shop at Wal-mart, and buy any music or movies from there in particular. Well, that and the fact that I worked at Target throughout high school and college, and met my future wife there. Still, I would prefer Target anyways; their stores are cleaner and the prices are pretty much the same.
posted by Justin on 9-18-2009 at 2:14 am
The best thing about that McLovin license is that while the name says McLovin, the signature actually says McLoving (you can see the g at the end).
posted by Ian on 9-18-2009 at 8:14 am
yeah Jeremy, nice response. Oohhh, wal-mart doesn’t have the brains to come up with a response. zing!
Yeah, ok, one of the largest companies in the world, making billions of dollars, and employing a sizeable portion of the population has a bunch of idiots at the helm.
Or, they just don’t care to respond to your political argument and will continue to do business as they always have.
I like how so many people think they have these deep and meaningful thoughts about the make up and structure of wal-mart and how they are so much smarter than anybody at wal-mart. It’s probably that attitude that wal-mart loves because they know it won’t make a dent against them.
posted by james on 9-18-2009 at 8:42 am
When Wal-Mart was first opening in Canada, their sporting goods section had big signs for Federal. I asked one clerk what they were planning to sell from this ammunition maker, and overnight, all those signs disappeared.
And gun magazines disappeared from the read-while-waiting-for-your-wife department.
posted by ArtW on 9-18-2009 at 8:48 am
I was banned as well! you know those things with wheels that help you slide under your car to work on it? well, we had races on them. while unrolling toilet paper…it was a blast, but we did get “banned for life”. I feel better knowing that there are more enemies of wal mart out there!
posted by Megan on 9-18-2009 at 9:10 am
I can’t say I’ve looked for all the items mentioned (or any of them for that matter), but I sense that the Canadian Wal-Marts are a bit more lax in the restrictions. When the latest Green Day CD came out, I remember hearing it was banned from US Wal-Marts, but I bought my Green Day CD from my neighbourhood Canadian Wal-Mart.
posted by Sheila on 9-18-2009 at 9:43 am
For Willie Nelson’s reggae album Countryman which had marijuana leaves on the cover a different version was sold at WalMart with plam trees instead of the leaves.
posted by Ben Erickson on 9-18-2009 at 9:55 am
I’m sure Megan Fox is just sooooooooooooooooooooooooo bummed she’s banned for life, now where can she go to buy the poorest quality stuff in all the retail world?
posted by Wayne on 9-18-2009 at 10:22 am
I’ve done them one better and banned myself from Wal-Mart.
posted by Bert on 9-18-2009 at 10:22 am
A “lifetime” ban from Wal-Mart can be rescinded after five years with a written request. I don’t know how many people ask, or what standards Wal-Mart uses to determine if people can come back, though.
I’m an ADA in a locality where it’s a rite of passage to steal from the local Wal-Mart, and I asked a loss prevention guy one time about it.
posted by Braindeadlawyer on 9-18-2009 at 10:46 am
@Bert, I’m right there with you buddy. I plan on it being a lifetime ban!
posted by Lyn on 9-18-2009 at 11:28 am
Score one for Emily!
I think the whole Midge ban was because of parents more than family values. I don’t think parents like it when their young girls actually have a reason to ask “where do babies come from” with tangible evidence in their questionaire. The whole stork debaucle is out the window and the explanation of conception is on the front burner. Now your 7 year old knows about sex, and has had enough practice with a Cabbage Patch Kid to go out and try to have one of her own (even though she’s not of age for it to be physically possible).
Though this comment has come from my thought process, these are far from my thoughts on the topic. (strange? yes)
I think a pregnant Barbie Doll is a great idea. A Barbie family is a far better role model than a clueless, materialistic, Paris Hilton-type, promiscuous, single, and scantily-clad Barbie.
posted by Steven on 9-18-2009 at 11:30 am
the al snow figure’s mannequin head was mistaken by the uninformed to be a woman’s severed head, hence the complaints.
after all, with a toy, it’s kinda hard to tell what’s supposed to be a real person’s head and a mannequin’s head…
posted by mcnuggets on 9-18-2009 at 12:16 pm
I personally hate shopping at my local Wal-Mart because it is the dirtest store I have ever seen! Having worked in retail, I would be ashamed to admit to be a member of management for that store. I have watched the employees walk over the products on the floor. They even have installed a questionaire on the little credit card pad asking if the store was clean during your visit. I have gotten a free vacuum from there because the cashier was too stupid to scan the giant box standing out of my cart. I had to talk around it to pay.
$200 vacuum, one stupid Wal-Mart employee, snickering while I sweep my living room – priceless.
recaptcha – Vancouver fecal – that covers it!!!
posted by Jaime on 9-18-2009 at 12:33 pm
They were also selling t-shirts with a Nazi skull on them: http://consumerist.com/consumer/walmart/walmart-sells-nazi-skull-tshirt-213942.php
posted by dan1101 on 9-18-2009 at 1:37 pm
While I do not believe in anything that Maurice Bessinger did in regards to the confederate flag, his racist actions, or his lunatic antics, I can tell you that his barbeque sauce is THE best mustard based sauce I have ever had.
It really sucks that if you buy his barbeque or sauce you are supporting a racist.
posted by stw on 9-18-2009 at 1:54 pm
Maurice Bessinger may be a hard core racist, but I’m tired of people looking at the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism. It’s a symbol of rebellion, not racism.
England had slaves for many, many years as well, but they still fly the Union Jack.
posted by Scott on 9-18-2009 at 3:08 pm
Thanks for the compliments my flossy friends. It was a real pick me up after an awful week.
posted by emily on 9-18-2009 at 3:18 pm
Shalom Ethan,
You missed what may the most famous item ever banned from Walmart: The Nazi T-shirt.
B’shalom,
Jeff Hess
The Writing On The Wal.
posted by Jeff Hess on 9-18-2009 at 3:33 pm
The ironic thing about the banning of the Al Snow action figure is that Al carried a mannequin head YET @ the same time they sold the movie “Sleepy Hollow” action figures that came with a “severed head”.
posted by Blue on 9-19-2009 at 11:07 am
Well, seeing as the Union Jack is not a flag representative of treason, Scott, and the Confederate flag is, there’s a bit of a difference between the two.
I have issues with Wal-Mart because of their unwillingness to distribute the morning after pill and the birth control pill, in some cases.
posted by Liz on 9-21-2009 at 3:09 pm
You forget the main things Wal-Mart has banned from their corporate ethos: ethics, compassion, philanthropy.
posted by Michelle on 10-1-2009 at 3:28 pm
I’m certainly not impressed with Wal-Mart and want to avoid it. I’d rather go to K-mart. -and besides, the last time I was at my local Wal-Mart I knew that the lies (gossip) about me had reached there. The greeter made a grand gesture of turning up his nose and turning his back to me, a snub in order to punish me for ‘crimes’ made up by a mentally ill bartender. At least he didn’t rant at me like the gas-station clerk did, or spit on me like the supermarket clerk did.
posted by Tdave on 10-4-2009 at 12:05 pm
Some of these are absolutely ridiculous haha.
posted by Cody on 10-16-2009 at 12:55 pm
You are all too liberal. Stop sinning and walking with the stars.
posted by f on 11-25-2009 at 8:22 pm
Yeah man Wal-Mart workers are not the smartest. I know a lady who would steal computers from Wal-Mart. And these were flat screen computers. Sometimes the managers would hold the door for her as she left.
posted by Cyclonus on 1-8-2010 at 4:04 pm