Please, this holiday season: be careful when your children enter ritual combat for the right to become Mand’alor.
Watchdog World Against Toys Causing Harm releases an annual list of big-ticket holiday toys that to warn parents about so their little ones don’t spend the festivities choking on small parts or, in an alternate timeline, firing Boba Fett’s rocket backpack into each other’s eyeballs. 2020's list of the 10 “worst” toys of the year however, via IGN, sees a Star Wars item take crowing place: the coveted Darksaber of Mandalore.
Well, the toy version, at least, released by Hasbro this fall in the run up to the return of The Mandalorian. The Darksaber Electronic Lightsaber costs $30, and features a light-up blade and sound effects of it crackling and clashing when you swing it around. But WATCH fears that young kids wanting to be a mini Moff Gideon or Pre Vizsla (or Sabine Wren, or Bo-Katan Kryze, and so on) on Christmas Day because...they might use it like a large, plastic sword and bonk someone over the head with it.
It’s not the only item on WATCH’s 2020 list to receive a similar warning: elsewhere from Hasbro, the Marvel Avengers Power FX Vibranium Claws are likewise dinged for being plastic weaponry an overzealous, Black Panther loving kid might use to rake a loved one. But it’s weird to see them sitting alongside choking hazards or projectile toys when, let’s be honest: who’s gonna buy a kid a toy lightsaber and then be surprised they want to swing it around like a plastic laser sword?
Kids have been doing that since there’s been toy lightsabers. And so far, no one’s lost a hand or anything! Unless they’re a Skywalker. But that’s their fault, mostly.
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