Grand Theft Auto cake for 4-year-old

For his birthday, Lil Derrick' parents gave him a Grand Theft Auto themed birthday cake, with a picture of a gun-toting car thief and rolled-up play money stuff into the frosting. (NOTE: I do not know whether it is a hoax or real.) Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Tao

I didn’t play Grand Theft Auto till I was six.
And no one cared. And I haven’t blown up any schools yet.
randee

Well, the good news is now we have Internet photos and “proof” so we can blame video games 10 years down the line when the child runs off the rails and does something tragic, probably in school.

I can hear Ann Curry’s voice now on the “Dateline” special.

Allowing toddlers to play games that are specifically rated for adults may not be the same thing as handing them over to wolves, but I think there’s some overlap on that Venn diagram.
Anonymous

@ Brian Damage
The only difference is that the movie industry has more lobbyists, more PAC money, and more people in their pocket.
Anonymous

Same as #5. I call shenanigans too.

This is a fake, no one would be this crass.
trai_dep

Can’t wait until the tyke turns five, so his parents can bake him a Battle Royale cake.
Matthew Walton

I’m not sure it’s appropriate to expose a four-year-old to the culture in that game.

Hell, I didn’t like it very much and I was 23 when I played it. I certainly wouldn’t let my kids play it (if I had any, that is). In the UK it’s rated 18, which seems a fair choice, but I would consider allowing it at a younger age if I was confident the child would understand its just a game.

That said, I’d be wanting them to play Half-Life 2 first. It’s a game, sure, but it’s not a very good one.
Jezzikuh

As a previous employee of Gamestop, I can attest that parents DO buy the Grand Theft Auto series for their children. At least they ATTEMPT to – I would often refuse to make the sale.

I don’t know if it’s a matter of these parents not knowing the content of the games, not understanding how the rating system works, or if they’re just willing to give their kid anything to shut him up, but it’s more than a little disturbing.

I remember a particular instance in which a mother and a grandmother came in with a little boy who couldn’t have been over five. As he bounded around the store “shooting” other customers, his mother lovingly selected “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” for the little ragamuffin to enjoy when he got home. I informed her that the game carried an “Adults Only” rating (which it did, at that time) and explained why. She brushed it off, stating, “oh, he’s fine. I watch him play it.”

Ah. Lovely.
Brian Damage

My mom made me an R2D2 cake when I was 5 or 6. The Star Wars movies feature mass genocide, incestuous kissing, racism, and illegal POW torture. But you don’t press the B button for that stuff to happen so it qualifies as kid-appropriate, right?
raybot

“(NT: d nt knw whthr t s hx r rl.)” SRPRSNG
Anonymous

Nice to see that these parent of the year candidates have a 4-yr old so intimately familiar with a game that features brutal violence, prostitution, drug dealing and carjacking that he’d be pleased with a cake in the same theme.

But I bet it’s Rockstar’s fault, right?
Anonymous

Disgusting.

Poor kid.
Hunty

This makes a perfect follow-up to the post about the movie “Idiocracy” I just read on a friend’s blog.

Humanity == Sad. :(
Cpt. Tim

thats not the kind of game you encourage your kids to play, even if you play it yourself, you forbid them to play it, and eventually they’ll get old enough to figure out how to play it behind your back.

thats how it worked for me and wolfenstein 3d
Anonymous

This cake is PRODUCT PLACEMENT, and you’re doing the same by posting it on this site. shame on you boingboing.
Mike8787

Why kind of child just turning four plays GTA? Parenting?
Anonymous

I played grand theft auto III for the first time at age… 7 i think. I’m thirteen, have played every GTA that came out, And i have yet to get in even a big fight at school…
TheCynic

Ah yes, when I was a kid we played cowboys and indians (nobody told us that this was politically incorrect) or a slight variation called “war”, which was actually more realistic than modern computer games, since our games were first-person-perspective where we shot at ultra-realistic looking children and it was always considered to be good form to go “ARGH!”, clutch your chest and fall down in dramatic fashion when someone shot you by pointing at you and saying “BANG!” I’m sure we would have happily used fake blood packets for even more realism if it wouldn’t get us in trouble over the mess on our clothes (ketchep stains can be tough to remove).

We also played Monopoly and other games that involved making a lot of money, usually at the expense of the other players.

And look what it did to me! I turned into a well to do computer programmer! Oh, woe is me! … I doubt kids who play Grand Theft Auto are any more likely to grow up stealing cars than I was likely to grow up shooting Native Americans.

It’s amazing to me that children seem far more capable of seperating fantasy from fiction than adults.
Anonymous

Y r ll dts.
Anonymous

Looks yummy. The only thing missing is dead hookers.

-J L Borghead
Anonymous

How do we know that cake is actually for a 4 year old and not just a posed cake to make a statement?

There’s no accompanying picture of the kid devouring the cake, no pictures of children at a party, no children or even a further explanation of the article.

I call fake. Fakity cakity fake.