“Unless I was looking for it, I probably would not think much about it, Now that I’m looking for it, it does sound like ‘WTF’.”

WTTE reporter Elizabeth Faugl asked some random passer-by what they thought, and while some picked up on the swearing, others got nothing. Others aren’t so sure they’re hearing the minions swearing. They’re going to assume it’s OK to say that.” are old enough now where they’re going to mock anything they hear from a toy.

“I heard what it said and I’m like, ‘whoa, hang on here.’ It clearly says what it says. Regardless, he’s pretty upset about it.Īnother parent, Taylor King of Columbus, Ohio, also thought her kids’ Minion toy was swearing, according to Mediate. YouTube user Paul Butts posted a video (it’s the feature video of this post) of his kid’s little guy saying something that sounds suspiciously like “What the f**k?” That is, if you’ve been told ahead of time to expect to hear it and if you’re listening for it. Nevertheless, some parents aren’t hearing gibberish in their toy minions, they hearing swearing. And if you’ve seen any of the movies in the Despicable Me franchise (or seen any of the commercials or trailers for the movies), you know that the Minions characters speak gibberish. They’re convinced the little toys are swearing at them, WTTE (Columbus) is reporting.Īs you probably already know, Universal’s Minions hits theaters this week, and like all kid-oriented summer blockbusters, there are fast-food merchandise tie-ins - in this case, little Minion toys that talk. Check out the CBC's Eli Glasner's review of the film here.Some parents are getting more than they bargained for in the Minions toys included with their children’s Happy Meals. Minions, a prequel of the Despicable Me movies, premieres Friday. The McDonald's promotion is scheduled to run through the end of July. Last year a group of researchers published a paper called 'Seeing Jesus in toast: neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia.' They wanted to understand what happens in the brains of people who see a face pop out of the toaster, and they received an Ig Nobel Prize, given to scientists who do unusual, imaginative or odd work of questionable importance. That contributed to the 'Paul Is Dead' conspiracy theory - in which the Beatles were supposedly covering up the death and replacement of Paul McCartney, but were constantly dropping hints about the cover-up in their songs - and lawsuits against heavy metal bands. The agency officially declared the words unintelligible.Ī similar phenomenon could have contributed to the belief that rock bands would put messages in their music that could only be heard by playing a record or running a tape backward. The band denied it, but hardly anybody could figure out the lyrics, including the FBI. In the 1960s the FBI investigated The Kingsmen's version of the song 'Louie Louie' after concerned citizens complained that the lyrics were obscene. The audio form of pareidolia has been causing confusion for years and years. It leads people to see shapes in clouds, a man in the moon or the face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich. The technical name for the phenomenon is 'pareidolia,' hearing sounds or seeing images that seem meaningful but are actually random. The clarity of the speech actually increases with multiple exposures, or if you are primed by being told what to listen for' - as most people who heard the toy online already had been.

'Once the brain feels it has found a best match, then that is what you hear. Steven Novella, a neurologist at the Yale School of Medicine. 'The brain tries to find a pattern match, even when just receiving noise, and it is good at pattern recognition,' says Dr. So people will sometimes hear words in gibberish - including words they might think are inappropriate. Nonsense speech will sometimes sound a bit like a real language, and experts say human brains are also wired to look for meaning in noise and images. said the Minion Caveman toy makes three sounds - 'ha ha ha,' `'para la bukay,' and 'eh eh.' The Oak Brook, Illinois-based company issued a statement saying it received only a few comments from customers about the toy, which was introduced July 3. The little yellow Minion characters speak a nonsense language and McDonald's Corp.

Minion toys swearing