'R' Scenes Found on 'Toy Story 2' DVDs

S E A T T L E, Oct. 20, 2000 -- DVDs of the Disney movie Toy Story 2 have been sold with brief clips of an R-rated film unexpectedly inserted.

The defective discs were discovered after a Redmond, Wash., mother bought the DVD in a three-disc set for her two young sons at a Cosco chain store in Kirkland, a town just east of Seattle.

Ryan Ward, 5, and his brother, Nathan, 9, were watching Toy Story 2, a G-rated film that centers around the adventures of a toy cowboy named Woody, and his other plaything friends.

After about 45 minutes, the boys’s mother, Janie Ward says the movie changed dramatically.

“We were watching Toy Story 2 … and it turned to a real movie show,” said Ryan.

“I didn’t like it at all,” Nathan said.

What appeared, Ward said, was a clip from the popular John Cusack film High Fidelity, an R-rated romantic comedy about a record shop owner who has trouble remaining faithful to his girlfriend.

“I heard a couple of swear words that I don’t think they’ve ever heard and am not sure they knew what they were, so I just got them out of the room as fast as I could,” said Ward.

“There were two of what I consider pretty foul strong words just in thatreally quick moment … and then it went to something else and then it came back to that same scene again,” she said.

Duplication Error Blamed

Toy Story 2, the sequel to a previous popular movie with many of the same characters, was released on DVD Tuesday.

A senior executive for Walt Disney Co., which is the parent company of ABCNEWS, declined to comment other than to say the defective DVDs were a “duplication error.”

Disney provided Costco more of an explanation.

“Disney claims something must have happened in theprocess of duplicating all the versions of it and can’t explain it,” said Joe Basse, vice president and general manager of merchandise for the Redmond, Wash.-based, chain.

He said Costco believes their stores were the only ones selling the three-DVD set.

Investigation Promised

Technicolor, which duplicated the DVD box sets for Disney, said in a statement the company was aware of the problem and was investigating it.

“The problem exists only in a small percentage of the three-disc DVD packages and is limited to a specific isolated region of the United States,” the statement read. The company believes that only some of the Toy Story 2 discs, all sold in the three-disc DVD set labeled the “Ultimate Toy Box,” were affected.

“Technicolor will continue to investigate the cause of the defect and the magnitude of the problem,” the statement read.

Thousands Sold — Defects Sought

“We sold several thousand [of the sets Tuesday], the first day,” Basse said Wednesday.

Costco has pulled the multi-packs and will contact registered members of the chain who bought them to make certain Toy Story 2 keeps its happy ending.

The chain said it got complaints Thursday from stores in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Los Angeles, both apparently about the three-disc set.

Ward says she is not pleased her sons were exposed to an R-rated movie.

“I’m not sure they knew the words they heard, but I didn’t really want them learning them,” she said.

Michelle Esteban of ABCNEWS affiliate KOMO-TV in Seattle and ABCNEWS.com’s Julia Campbell contributed to this report.