Confessions of a Follower

To begin my new blog series MeEqualsConcerned, I wanted to take a look at a new game from the Hasbro Toy Company. You know, the people who brought us games like Monopoly and Connect Four (it always felt so good to win at those games!) Anyway, the Hasbro team has hit the market again, this time with their new game called "Cuponk." Here's the logo below:

Before I say anything else, let me say that I took this logo from the Hasbro website. It's theirs and the copyright is theirs. All I did was mess around with the color scheme a little to help it match my banners for the series.

Okay, now that that's done and I covered my bases to avoid any jail time, let me share about the game. It looks pretty simple to say the least. As the logo says, all you do is put the ball in the cup. I, for one, find the dashed arrow incredibly helpful. I mean, how else would I know that the cup had a giant hole in it? Ha. All kidding aside, this game appears to really be taking off. I first heard about this game from a commercial I saw on TV last week and then found some videos for it via YouTube

After watching some of their videos, even one with skater Bam Margera as a pitchman for the game, I'm left feeling concerned. My concerns intensified after I saw other Twitter users see the game as I did: a game of Beer Pong for little kids.

After some serious thought, I was thinking about all the possibilities that this game has to reach little kids. Here's what I came up with:

• The name "Cuponk"--It's like Hasbro just changed one letter (pon"G" to pon"K") just so they could distance themselves from the collegiate party passtime.
• The "Trick Shot" Concept--On the TV ads, when you order your Cuponk game it comes with thirty different "Trick Shot" cards. You can even see some of them in the YouTube vids. Some of these shots are awesome looking, which I think could be a reason for them to appeal to kids and college students. Give them to a guy at a state school and you may as well given him a Beer Pong Playbook. I think kids would jump at the chance to watch a ping pong ball fly around a room very fast.
• The Flashing Light--This has to be the most obvious. KIDS LOVE ANYTHING THAT FLASHES!

In the end, I just don't feel right about things like this hitting the market. Yeah, anybody can buy this game and have fun with it, but its target seems to be towards little kids, kids whose sense of judgment isn't fully developed yet, kids who are still impressionable. They might see this and play with this toy now and later in their lives (maybe around college-age) see a game like Beer Pong and think, "Hey, I played with a toy like that when I was a kid. That looks like fun."

My goal is with this series is to get you guys to think about things like this. I don't want any of us to have a stigma to people who drink or anything like that. Christ calls to love EVERYONE, and if I'm correct, kids who play with toys and people who drink count as everyone. My desire is that we would be alert to what our culture is up to, what ideas and message they're sending to us, and how those message line up with God's Word.

What do you guys think?

• Would YOU buy Cuponk and play it yourself? Would you buy it for your kids?
• Do you think this game is something harmless?
• Am I way off base here?
• What other messages do you think our society is sending us, and how are they sending them?