Its really their own fault for having healthy normal sized kids...Stop feeding your kids so much!

Realized that came off as a fat reference more than tounge in cheek ;(

Dude, that box looks like a gigantic monster slide.

The grocery store shrink ray strikes Toys R Us!

It's a shame that the image is not available under one of the more liberal CC licenses. :-(

Otherwise, we could have uploaded the image directly to the listing on Amazon.

Wow. The fact that such an egregiously deceptive product can stay on the shelves tells me that manufacturers are banking that consumer laws won't be enforced. I applaud the bad reviews on Amazon, and I savored them all, but at the end of the day no one is going to remember who Banzai is, and they'll just change their model number from B950A862 to B950A863 with the exact same stuff inside. The old product and reviews will be forgotten but the same Lilliputian pool set will be right back up on store shelves next summer and Toys-R-Us (aka The Chinese Connection) won't give a damn.

I just saw this in the Amazon reviews: There is a disclaimer in the packaging telling the consumer they cannot return the product to the store.

I've seen plenty of "do not return product to store" notices in boxed items, but "cannot return product" notices?? Is that correct?

@timmus: I ignore them. It is simply manufacturers trying to keep returns down at retailers.

Wanted: Elven Hobbits for photo shoot. Must be freakishly thin. Experience feigning joy for camera in spite of poor draw of genetic cards a plus. Pls supply own teensy bathing suit. Smoking area and 2nd breakfast provided.

@timmus: I have an Intex kiddie pool in my backyard and it does state in huge bold letters on it: DO NOT RETURN TO STORE.

So that seems to be common with these kinds of products.

Box images are usually exaggerated anyway (as are images and visuals in most advertising, but this is a bit much.

There must be some recourse, it's like ordering an $80 000 Porsche and instead receiving some little dinky car (exaggeration, but principle is the same).

the box pool eats reality pools for breakfast.

not surprising, its the shrink ray at work again.

Those kids look like they are about to cry over their shrunken water park. I know I would have.

Most products that are just one piece of material, which has no resale value at all... a plastic swimming pool, a spindle of optical disks, a piece of foam board are bad for manufacturers when they get returned to a retailer.
Generally the retailers are ordered by the manufacturer to destroy the product, and the manufacturer reimburses the retailer for the products cost.

There was an old sketch on You Can't Do That On Television where one of the kids gets a prize in the cereal box, and he says that it should be bigger. The Father explains that the kid is a midget, and makes thousands of dollars making things look larger.

@Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy: You Can't Do That On Television... damn I miss the 90s!

We sold this early in the summer. I was wondering why almost everyone of them got returned.

@sean77: Wow, I really didn't think anyone would manage to pull off a 'blame the consumer' in this story, but you managed to do so both subtly and fantastically!

Remember, everyone, don't trust your lying eyes, make sure you measure and tape off the area to see what you're really getting!

silly consumer...you're supposed to use the Grocery Shrink Ray on your kids before they play on it. Duh.

@timmus: Banzai makes, and has been making, a lot of toys and kid products... it's not just one of those companies that will just disappear.

@imwm: No, but this product will disappear from Banzai's lineup and reappear in some other company under the parent corporation. I can't find the company site in the first few Google pages, but it sounds like a zaibatsu subdivision. If it's not Japanese (as the name implies), then it's some Chinese megacorp doing the manufacturing and releasing it through an American distributor.

Either way, calling them on it just makes the company play the shell game.

This is just beyond sad there should be something someone can do to help stop this from going on. I mean look at it as if you were one of thous kids how would you feel?

Apple did the same thing when they had a model with ginormous hands hold the iphone.

@dtracker:

The fact is, we've all run into this sort of thing before. The picture on the box never looks like the product inside, and we humans are notoriously bad at judging size. (Who hasn't bought something that turned out smaller than they expected, or larger?)

The more pragmatic of us takes it as a life lesson, and move on.

I bought a TV a couple of years ago that looked to be about the right size in the store but was a bit too big when I got it home... I kept it anyway ;-)

/Wife Rolls Eyes

We got an inflatable slide like this one time. It was a little more accurately represented, though, and a lot larger.

I'm just wondering who the jackass is that designed this thing to be so tiny. Infants drown, you know.

CHECK THIS OUT:

At first, i thought that the kids on the box were Photoshopped to look smaller. But upon closer inspection (pay careful attention to the placement of the graphics on the outside wall of the 2 pools) it became obvious that they actually used a larger version of the product for the photo shoot!!! That's an even dirtier tactic than Photoshopping the image.

@sean77: Your implication that this sort of practice is perfectly acceptable is disturbing.

Won't somebody think of the tiny, tiny children!!

Just wait until they compare the packaging of blow up dolls and the actual content.

But damn, for $84 that's a huge ripoff.

To add insult to injury, the exact same pool is offered at $84.99 and $42.88 on Amazon.
[www.amazon.com]

OMG Honey I Shrunk The Kids!

(then sold them on to do photo shoots for toy manufacturers)

Those midget leprechauns are having such a blast in that box picture. They'll be all tired out and will be sleeping soundly tonight in their little willow-tree nests in the cool night air and moonlight, before doing it all again tomorrow.

I was actually deceived into buying this product at Walmart. After putting it together and filling it, my wife and I looked at it, then the box and realized we had been fooled by a massive photoshop disaster. When you look at the box at full size it's *very* obvious how bad the photoshop hack job was. Kids cut out and placed on the slide, etc. By the time I realized that we had been fooled, the kids were playing in it (one at a time) and you know you can't just take something like that away from a 3 year old without enduring the 7 levels of whiny hell. This is definitely one for the photoshop disasters blog.

Wow, I'm impressed that the marketing people bothered to actually shrink down the children in the photo, what with the cost of tiny atoms and everything. Have you priced those lately? I'm not made of money, leave me alone!

We bought a jungle canopy pool by the same company. Same problem. I have a 3 year old and 1 year old and they couldn't play in the pool together though in the photo there are 4 approximately 5 year olds all sitting in the pool. We also got a piece of paper in the box saying it can't be returned to the store, but I am going to try it anyway. I contacted the customer service email address for the company but never got replies.

If the product is sold without any hint that it doesn't fall under the same return policies as any other item in the store, that "Do Not Return to Store" notice can't possibly be valid.

@woot:
The $42.88 one is being sold by someone else, not Amazon themselves.

@sean77: You're blaming the victim here - against our comment guidelines. The point of the post, as I'm sure you realize, is the misleading box art. Don't do this again.

@sean77: This is SO not the same thing.

The kid in me is very angry about this.

I bought one of these last year for my then five-year-old son. I noticed right away that it wasn't what it looked like. However, since I have only one child it worked out well for the most part. The spray thing doesn't work too well. But, ny son still does enjoy using it.

I'd return it. These things are such terrible eyesore's anyhow. Plus one poke, and the thing becomes life endangering.

ok - the picture is deceiving but i've learned this lesson buying toys online before.

ALWAYS check dimensions before you buy.

If I can't find dimensions on the box, I DON'T BUY IT!

Photo-manipulating the box is pretty sleazy.

I don't know many people that have half-scale miniature children.

While there may be some photoshopping, I'm going to have to side with the completely different model based on the number of ring toss sticks (2 vs 4 on the box)

@Consumerist-Moderator-Roz: That's AGAINST the guidelines??!

Then why is it allowed to happen on virtually every consumerist post?

That's just plain deceptive advertising and no matter what the box says, return it to the store and get your money back. I've never had a problem doing that. They should be ashamed of themselves.