Josh Sherman
Shark Tank, you fucked up, you fucked up bad.
I was watching the latest episode of Shark Tank (Season 7, Episode 5) with my daughter when I had to abruptly stop the show and make up an excuse as to why we were no longer watching the show.
The segment about the Switch Witch had just come on and after a brief moment I knew exactly where they were going with it. What I wasn’t sure of was whether or not they were going to be specific enough about the product in such a way that would completely obliterate the years of magic my wife and I have created with our daughter.
They did, and I’m glad I stopped it when I did.
The product is very much like the Mensch on a Bench (so it’s a copy of a copy?) that was featured on a previous season. At the time my daughter was younger and the Mensch pitch didn’t go into any specifics about the magic.
The Switch Witch pitch though, Robert makes a reference to the parents leaving a present in exchange for the candy. The guy doing the pitch corrects him that “the witch leaves” the gift. I’m unsure whether or not that would have clicked with my daughter and opened up a whole can of questions about our Elf on the Shelf and holidays in general.
Maybe I’m just overreacting, but the fact is, we raise our daughter to ask questions and find logical answers for things. We have also preserved a bit of childhood innocence and a belief in magic. Shark Tank also made it into the things we expose our daughter to because we think it’s pretty education and for the most part, pretty damn wholesome.
Sadly, Shark Tank has to be downgraded from “good to go” to ”needs parental pre-screening”. I’m hoping that just going over the list of pitches before we watch an episode will be enough of a buffer.
