These shelf-top signs telling kids that they need ID to buy rated movies or video games also struck me as a bit unusual -- I don't remember having seen anything like this at other chains, but maybe I just haven't been paying attention. I'm not sure what's up with the partially hand-written tag on the shelf below it -- I don't think they would have been getting ready for the remodel already at the time of this visit...
I'm guessing that handwritten note is from some sort of independent inventory audit of some kind.
ReplyDeleteI'd be rather surprised if Fred Meyer actually cards teenagers buying media with explicit content these days. For one, there probably aren't too many teenagers buying physical media, lol, but also this was mostly a social panic controversy that happened in the 1990s and early 2000s. Retailers handled these explicit music sales rather differently. Wal-Mart generally only sold 'explicit' albums if the explicit content was removed. Target would sometimes sell both censored and uncensored versions. I don't know if they carded people buying the uncensored versions. Real record stores rarely cared about explicit content, lol.
I'm far from a teenager and I generally only buy classical music CDs, and maybe the rare jazz CD, so I really don't know if kids still get carded when buying music. I'm not an opera fan, but I reckon some operas could be considered explicit. I'm guessing this avoided controversy because, well, it is opera and because the libretto is generally in Italian or German.
Ah, that would make sense...
DeleteYeah, I doubt that too. Even by the time I was a teenager, which was a while ago already, I almost always got my music from iTunes or the library (and plenty of it was labeled as "explicit" anyway!).
That opera comment reminds me of how strange it seemed going to places where English wasn't the main language and hearing the full explicit versions of English-language songs on the radio and in public places! Makes me wonder if any of the non-English-language music I sometimes hear around here is similarly uncensored.