Did Fisher-Price release 'My First Peaceful Protest' playset with a house that children can set ablaze? No, that's not true: This is a satirical claim published by a well-known satire website. This satire piece stems from the recent protests that have been happening across the United States following the death of George Floyd.
The claim originated in an article published by "The Babylon Bee" on September 21, 2020, titled "Fisher-Price Releases 'My First Peaceful Protest' Playset With House You Can Actually Burn Down" (archived here) which opened:
EAST AURORA, NY--The toy geniuses at Fisher-Price have announced a brand new toy made just for leftist parents and their kids: the My First Peaceful Protest playset. The kid-size clubhouse will come with several varieties of spray paint so kids can tag the tiny building with their own empowering slogans. It will also be made out of cardboard, allowing the cute little tikes to burn the whole thing down if their demands are not met.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Fisher-Price Releases 'My First Peaceful Protest' Playset With House You Can Actually Burn Down
EAST AURORA, NY--The toy geniuses at Fisher-Price have announced a brand new toy made just for leftist parents and their kids: the My First Peaceful Protest playset. The kid-size clubhouse will come with several varieties of spray paint so kids can tag the tiny building with their own empowering slogans. It will also be made out of cardboard, allowin ...
As of Wednesday morning, the article has over 1 million interactions on Facebook and climbing. After The article was published, google searches for "fisher price" dramatically spiked.
In more than 93% of all demonstrations connected to the movement, "demonstrators have not engaged in violence or destructive activity," according to a recent study by The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).
The Babylon Bee is a satire site with following disclaimer on the 'about' page:
What is The Babylon Bee?
The Babylon Bee is the world's best satire site, totally inerrant in all its truth claims. We write satire about Christian stuff, political stuff, and everyday life.
The Babylon Bee was created ex nihilo on the eighth day of the creation week, exactly 6,000 years ago. We have been the premier news source through every major world event, from the Tower of Babel and the Exodus to the Reformation and the War of 1812. We focus on just the facts, leaving spin and bias to other news sites like CNN and Fox News.
If you would like to complain about something on our site, take it up with God.
Unlike other satire sites, everything we post is 100% verified by Snopes.com.
The site has been feuding with Snopes and CNN in the recent past over accusations that wasn't being transparent enough about being satirical:
Satire or Deceit? Christian Humor Site Feuds With Snopes
The Babylon Bee says Snopes went too far in fact-checking a satirical story. Snopes had suggested the Bee twisted its joke to deceive readers. It's a fake-news feud made for 2019. On one side is Snopes, the influential fact-checking website founded 25 years ago.
Babylon Bee stings CNN with satirical article: There's only room for 'one fake news site'
The Babylon Bee had some fun at the expense of CNN after one of its reporters attacked the conservative satirical site over an article's popularity on social media.
At Lead Stories we are big fans of satire but in accordance with our Satire Policy we sometimes fact-check satirical content if it seems there are many people who don't get the joke (or if the joke gets stolen by Macedonian fake news sites and is then presented as "news"). To quote from our Satire Policy:
Sometimes jokes need to be fact checked. Not for you, because you are smart and you get the joke. But for the crazy uncle who thinks it is real. Or for the foreign journalist who doesn't know what The Onion is. Or for the people who missed the disclaimer and the hints. Or because the disclaimer and the hints were hidden on purpose.
And that is certainly not hypothetical in the case of The Babylon Bee:
This is why you sometimes need to fact check @TheBabylonBee
-- Lead Stories (@LeadStoriesCom) January 10, 2020
Not for the smart people who get the joke, but for Russian journalists who don't :-)
Seems like they didn't read our fact check from last year...https://t.co/OwnhkGeCKg https://t.co/0DbZ257ukz
Early in 2020 Sputnik News was fooled by a piece from The Babylon Bee into reporting Jordan Peterson would be hosting the Oscars. If only they had read our fact check from a year before...
