https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/trolls-hasbro-doll-pizzagate-qanon-1041202/
How QAnon and Pizzagate Conspiracy Theorists Got a ‘Trolls’ Doll Pulled From Stores
Earlier this week, a video of a Hasbro doll of Poppy, Anna Kendrick’s character from the children’s movie Trolls World Tour, started going viral. The video showed a woman examining the doll and pointing out a voice-activation button located on the doll’s crotch. “Stuff has been going on in the world about sex trafficking in kids and things that are thrown in our kids’ faces to groom them,” the woman says, saying she found something about the doll “disturbing.” She then points out a motion-activated sensor on the doll’s crotch, detailing how it made giggling, “gasping” sounds when you push it.
The claim was partially debunked by Facebook after it went viral, with independent fact-checkers labeling it as “partly false” — the button between its legs wasn’t actually a button, but a sensor that was intended to be activated when the doll sat down. Yet the video proliferated across the internet, prompting the creation of a Change.org petition from mom Jessica McManis, demanding Hasbro remove the doll from its shelves. “What will this toy make our innocent, impressionable children think? That it’s fun when someone touches your private area? That pedophilia and child molestation are OK?,” the petition reads. The petition garnered nearly 250,000 signatures and ultimately prompted Hasbro to pull the doll from shelves.