OK, so I was at Target on Friday looking for cheap games in the marked-down section (red price-tags!) and I found a copy of “Big Mutha Trickers 2” for $2.49. Since I have a weakness for trucking games, and $2.49 is my ‘buy it now’ price-point, I had to get it. I know it’s a bad game but so what? I wanted to try for myself. I also picked-up a copy of “Little Miss Sunshine” for my sister-in-law for her birthday.

When I went to check-out the cashier scanned “Little Miss sunshine” with no event, and then scanned “Big Mutha Truckers 2.’  Immediately an alarm went off on her register and she requested my I.D., which I gladly gave her. Since “Big Mutha a Truckers 2” is rated “M”, I figured this was their new way to stop selling “M” rated games to the under age kids.   I’m not against that.  There are tons of great games for kids to play that don’t contain mature content.

However, when I left the store, I checked my bag and noticed that “Little Miss Sunshine” is rated “R”…and then I got upset. So it is conceivable that a kid could go to Target and buy the entire “Saw” series, every “80’s” teen sex comedy, and any movie with content that borders just this-side of criminal, BUT, they would only be carded if they supplemented this purchase with an “M” rated game?

Look, I’m all-for ratings and keeping kids from mature content, but when kids can buy movies with some of the most gratuitous sex and torture scenes ever filmed, yet get stopped only when it happens to be a video game that contains : ‘Language, Mature Humor, Suggestive Themes (according the it’s ‘Big Mutha Truckers 2’ ESRB rating), something seems very  wrong to me.  R-Rated movies have gone places and contain content that would make the virtual participants in the “Hot Coffee” mini-game blush and turn away from the screen in horror, yet, seemingly, according to Target anyway, they are O.K. for kids.

Furthermore, The cashier could not simply look at my I.D. she had to physically swipe it through her register so the sale could be made. I don’t even think they do that for alcohol!   In the Target pharmacy, you merely have to request pseudofed from behind the counter.  So from that perspective (if I’m correct), a 13 year-old kid drinking a 6-pack of Miller beer, watching a ‘Porky’s II’/’Hostel’ double feature while mixing a batch of crystal meth in his basement, is actually less threatening to Target than the same kid getting a-hold of a bargain copy of “Big Mutha Truckers 2.”