Wal-Mart's Terrible Nintendo Wii Knock-Offs

MaryAlan writes "Wal-Mart is now selling an electronic LCD game in the kid's section that resembles a Wiimote so closely that even Wal-Mart employees can't tell them apart in a picture. But the games — made by ToyQuest out of L.A. — are complete and utter crap, to the point of being unplayable. Their only redeeming feature is that they look like the Nintendo Wii, which means Wal-Mart is relying on brand confusion to sell any of these things to unsuspecting customers. There is a gallery of photos online, so you can take a look at side-by-side pictures with a true Wiimote, down to the fake speaker on the front. "

Obvious

[Nom du Keyboard]

Hey, Wal-Mart is always looking for the lowest price on items - even to the point of telling manufacturer's to make a cheaper, lower quality, unit. So they found it. Where can they go from here? A picture of a Wii in a box? (Worked on eBay for another gaming console.)

Re:They don't look at all alike.

[Ephemeriis]

They don't look alike at all.

Yes, they do. It's not just superficial... It's fairly obvious that the knock-off was intentionally designed to look like a Wii-mote.

the changes are significant enough that I wouldn't be fooled.

You aren't the target here.

I used to work at Electronics Boutique over the holidays, and I can guarantee that there are plenty of parents out there who would purchase this thing without a moment's hesitation - believing the whole time that they were purchasing a Wii-mote, or even the entire Wii system.

Parents used to show up with the most vague descriptions of what their child wanted... Or pictures clipped from catalogs, sales fliers, and magazines... Folks wouldn't know whether they needed a game for the PS2, Xbox, Game Cube, or computer. All they knew is that their kid said this, or it looked like that, or it had some guy with wings in it.

We had plenty of returns after Christmas because of this confusion. Folks who bought the game for entirely the wrong system...or the wrong kind of memory card...or bought some part of the system instead of the whole thing... And that was all without overly deceiving advertising or product design like this thing.

Re:unethical

[G Fab]

I've got friends who work at Wally world, and I mean no disrespect, but a lot of walmart employees are complete idiots.

And yeah, this is a dinky toy that is meant to knock off a great toy. Kinda sad, but the market will correct. IN fact, it has. For many people, walmart ain't worth the trouble of sandals melting my feet off or lead filled vampire teeth toys. Sure, walmart is doing fine, but only for those who really don't care about reliability. If you don't give a crap about reliability, walmart presents a great bargain for you.

Walmart isn't ruining anything. It's just another lame component of our world. Provides context for all the nice things. It has revolutionized distribution processes and greatly reduced the number of retail ripoffs, and thus has made virtually every american richer. Sounds crazy, but it's true.

Re:unethical

[Jerf]

The true, original purpose of trademark law (which I am aware I'm the first to bring up) is to protect the consumer from products that are designed to fool you into believing you are purchasing a product from somebody other than the true source. That is why the touchstone of trademark infringement is "Would a reasonable consumer confuse the two products?"

As usual, you can skirt the line. You can argue about whether it claims to be a Wii, exactly what the box says, exactly what it claims to be, etc. Nevertheless, I'd say the intent here is pretty clearly to pick up sales through deception, with varying degrees of plausible deniability. That they try to stay on the legal side of the line doesn't make it automatically ethical.

They don't give me enough data to come to a conclusion. But it's certainly enough to be suggestive.

Is it also unethical to sell squirt guns on the basis that they are (or were, anyways) designed to look like guns, except instead of using gun powder to propel bullets, they shoot water?

"Guns" are not a protectable item. A closer analogy here, despite my hatred of using analogies in online debates, are the numerous "generic controllers" that you can buy that contain games in them, but are not unauthorized representations of any particular controller. Only a squirt gun that looked like a specific, trademarked gun would be comparable, and yes indeed, the law will require you to get permission. You can't make a model car that looks exactly like a real car without permission, which is why the Grand Theft Auto world is populated by knockoffs. You can't make a model Enterprise without permission from Paramount, but you can make any generic space ship you want. As is invariably the case with analogies used in debates, the difference between the analogy and the real-world situation render your analogy irrelevant.

Re:Obvious

[ILuvRamen]

not even just lowest price, some of their decisions just plain evil/stupid. Have you heard the story about the whole meat issue? Ever wonder why Walmart ground beef smells, looks, feels, and tastes like some sort of rotting roadkill compared to respectable grocery stores? It's because as I understood the explanation, they refuse to buy meat from any meat processors that are unionized which leaves absolute crap companies. Don't eat Walmart meat...in fact, don't even shop there. They'll pick up any product if it's cheap and they think it will sell. Soon they're going to have way too many people with the feeling that Walmart sells 100% cheap crap products, which somehow they've been able to somewhat avoid so far.
P.S. I actually know the person who sold just a console box on ebay for retail price of a new unit cuz the bidder didn't read carefully.

Re:Obvious

[xrayspx]

My wife and I pointed out an entire 8' section of the WalMart meat cooler that was at least 10 days out of code, and very brown/green/fuzzy. The employee did nothing about it and went back to what they were doing. I (in my former capacity as a supermarket employee) would have flown over there and scooped it all out, no matter what department I worked in. So would any of my coworkers. I've happily spent less than $1/year at WalMart in the last decade, but I feel that even that is too much.

Re:So what!?

[orkysoft]

This makes me think of those non-poisonous snakes that have the same kind of stripes as a poisonous snake species, so they benefit from the deterrence effect without needing to invest in poison glands themselves.

Re:Obvious

[fermion]

This is rather simplistic. Workers can only do what the engineers design, and engineers can only design what management lets them. When management is concerned primrily with cooking books to fabricate maximum profit to create maximum bonuses, very little of quality get designed. I have seen america companies compete with offshore interests. It takes dedication of the management to not maximize personal compensation, and to pay workers well, either through union efforts or out of enlightened self interest. Turnover is detrimental to quality. Lack of innovation is detrimental to quality. Keeping non productive workers on staff, either on the floor or in the offices, is detrimental to quality.

Quality does not happen by accident. It must be designed, and it must be balanced with materials, time, and other costs. One thing american manufacturers did in the late 60's and 70's to really fuck themselves was not pay to design quality. The anti-intellectualism, that the egg heads had nothing to contribute, lead to some very bad choices. Sure, part of this was unions trying to keep thier members employed, but that is what they do, just like management tries to hire workers at the lowest rate, even if that means the worker cannot feed their family. That is the way it goes. But one can hardly blame the worker that is told to build a 15 mpg car with a year warrenty instead of a 25 mpg car with a 3 year warranty. That is clearly a management decision. It reminds me of my management time. It was often best when I could delivery not what internal or external customer thought they wanted, but what they actually needed.

Re:Obvious

[LeoHat]

*cough*Bullshit*cough*Bullshit*

Walmart average wage is $9.68/hr. Costco's average is $16.

Walmart: only 38% of nonsupervisory staff has health care. Walmart dumps its employee health care on the state health care system.
Costco: 85% of employee's are covered. Costco offers part-time employees partial coverage. There is even a test program to offer a health care plan to self employed customers.

On a per store basis Costco does double that of Walmart
"Wal-Mart operates 5,332 stores with annual sales of $288 billion, or $54 million per store. Costco has 452 stores with annual sales of $48 billion, or $106 million per store."

Costco's turnover is about 1/3 of Walmarts.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc2005107_6620.htm [businessweek.com]

The Costco Mission Statement
1)Obey the law.
2)Take care of our members.
3)Take care of our employees.
4)Respect our vendors.
5)Reward our shareholders.

Walmart does not even have a official mission statement

(disclaimer: I work for Costco)

Re:Obvious

[Rodyland]

Obey the law? It's a sad commentary on corporate culture that that should have to be specified in a mission statement.

I'd say it's a sad commentary on the state of the law and its enforcement when a company can make a point by making a point of obeying the law...

Re:Obvious

[smurfsurf]

The funny thing about Ford vs. Toyota is that as Toyota as a japanese company already provides its workers much of what unions care about. Job security, long time relationship perspective and care for the employee instead of workers vs. management for example.

Re:Obvious

[Gordonjcp]

But you've got a totally different working culture in Japan. In Japan, companies actually take some degree of responsibility for their employees. In the US, companies would be quite happy to work employees until they drop, and then serve the remains up as lunch if they thought it would make a penny a unit more profit.

Re:Obvious

[dank zappingly]

A living wage is a very nice idea. However, there is a theory that raising the minimum wage generally increases unemployment. In other words, if a company can't afford to pay a living wage, they fire the people they can no longer afford. Minimum wage is better than no wage at all. Also, when you pay people more, the goods they are producing tend to start to cost more, and the living wage you were aiming for won't buy the same basket of goods. There is also a collective action problem. If one company institutes a living wage, it makes the goods in that country more expensive. Companies then outsource heavily, and the next thing you know, you are sending your boxes to china to be stacked and then shipped back. You can try to remedy this problem with protective tariffs, but believe it or not, they aren't too popular.