What was Sophie’s surprise, when she came across the image of the frighteningly possessed little girl from the film “The Exorcist”, while she was leafing through the latest leaflet from the Cora supermarket. Shocked that this monstrous doll is offered on the page devoted to children’s toys, Sophie decided to notify us via the orange Alert us button.
Sophie jumped at the sight of a rather scary product in her Cora flyer. On one of the pages devoted to toys, there is a terrifying doll from the cult horror film “The Exorcist”. Still stunned, Sophie pressed the orange Alert us button: “Easter… a celebration dedicated to children. In a CORA folder…I’m shocked. The exorcist doll, it looks like a joke, but it’s real. Just the sight of it reminds me of that traumatic movie“.
In this 1973 film, a little girl is possessed by a demon and must be exorcised. A whole generation remembers disturbing scenes, such as the one where the young Regan MacNeil levitates and turns her head 360°, or the one where she descends the stairs like a spider. This horrific character, whose face is deformed by injuries, has traumatized more than one and therefore has nothing to do between Pikachu and Mario.
Contacted by us, Henri Devreux, the marketing director of Cora, recognized an error: “We have a buyer, who makes the orders and he chooses what to put in the folder, but he has been sick for a year. Substitutes made this choice, but it doesn’t really belong on this page” he explained to us. Henri Devreux said that from now on the content of the leaflets will be better controlled, “they justified that by saying that it was a ‘geek’ toy, whereas it’s a rather childish universe. If I had seen it, I would have opposed it. We should have been more vigilant, and it won’t happen again“.
What to do when your child sees a scary image?
It’s likely that a few kids stumbled upon this monstrous doll while leafing through this flyer from Cora. This horrific image could mark some. Indeed, according to child psychiatrist Eric Picard, “children have always been afraid of monsters, it’s a representation of danger, it’s normal, we’ve all had that and it’s formative“. He adds that they like to control these fears, “they draw dragons for example“. But for these fears to be mastered, there should be a dialogue with an adult: “It is important that they are not alone with this. They must be able to talk about it, and the adult must be reassuring“.
According to Eric Picard, you also have to respect the fears of your children. “We can tell them that we’re going to help them not see the thing that scares them, that we’re going to choose books that don’t have that. Then, when they feel ready, they like to go and watch from time to time, but not alone“, he specifies.
Despite the omnipresence of frightening images on the internet or in the media, the child psychiatrist does not think that our children are less sensitive to them. On the contrary : “It’s not the same thing when it’s a media that tells it, because it’s done in a very cold way. We must continue to tell imaginary images, and to modulate them according to the child“.