It’s not Halloween season unless there’s a spate of stores—online and brick-and-mortar alike—that are forced to remove offensive costumes and decorations from their shelves.
Disney was the first culprit of the season. Now Home Depot, with its Scary Peeper Creeper, is joining the ranks.
Fortune described the decoration:
The Halloween window decoration, which is meant to represent a “peeping Tom,” is “perfect for scaring friends and family during Halloween or any other time of the year,” according to its description on Home Depot’s website.
The decoration has suction cups for mounting on a window, and costs $29. It features a creepy looking, hooded man peering through a window with furrowed brows, and a full-sized head, face, and hands. The decoration is meant to look realistic.
The club also includes last year’s Caitlyn Jenner costume, the infamous “Lady Boy Drag” number and Walmart’s “Fat Girl” costume section.
Unlike the poor-taste costumes of Halloweens past, however, Scary Peeper Creeper is still available online and in United States stores, though the decoration was removed from shelves in Home Depot’s Canadian locations.
One Canadian consumer told CBC News in Toronto that the decoration “made light” of a dangerous situation:
After spotting the decoration in the store, Breanne Hunt-Wells contacted CBC News to complain, saying the Creeper is "inappropriate and makes light of a real-life, sinister issue that women face in our society."
"I fail to see the humour in it," Hunt-Wells said in an interview on CBC Radio's Metro Morning show today. "It makes light of a very serious crime. Voyeurism is a crime in Canada."
After receiving a complaint about the “Scary Peeper Creeper,” Home Depot said it planned to stop selling the item.
“We agree that this is not in line with our core values, and when we heard, took immediate action and are currently in the process of removing this product from our assortment,” a Home Depot spokeswoman told CBC. “We’ve reached out to advise the customer of our actions and apologize. We’re sorry for any offense that was caused.”
The makers of the decoration and prank device also apologized, the Chicago Tribune reported:
Scary Peeper, owned by a husband-and-wife team based in North Carolina, said Monday that it had also reached out to Hunt-Wells to apologize.
"We at Scary Peeper would never, ever, condone any type of violence," owners Morgan and Emily Dowtin said in a statement emailed to the Post. "Our intention for this product is for it to be used as a fun-spirited prank. We offer our sincerest apologies to anyone who has been offended by our products, and certainly, to those who have been victimized by voyeurs. Violence towards women is a serious issue, and our products are not intended to make light of serious crimes."
from PR Daily News Feed http://ift.tt/2dCpz6R
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