The Day New Jack, RVD, And Jerry Lynn Appeared In The U.S. Senate

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On September 13, 2000 there was a U.S. Senate committee hearing on marketing of violent materials to children. It aired on C-SPAN in the United States. Part of the committee's discussion was between Senator Brownback (Kansas) and then-FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky. The discussion mentioned the discrepancy of companies with "rated M" media which also marketed to young children at the same time.

The Kansas Senator then held up a copy of ECW Hardcore Revolution (the first video game) which has Rob Van Dam (RVD) and Jerry Lynn on the front cover - which has the "M" rating. He then went into more detail on New Jack's action figure which was rated for children ages 4 and older. This took place exactly four months prior to ECW's last show (January 13, 2001), so it is unknown what actions (if any) the FTC took regarding ECW and the manufacturers of the game (Acclaim Entertainment) & action figures (OSFTM).

The Senator mentions the "No Limit Soldiers" on New Jack's action figure t-shirt as well as his wearing a noose. The conversation about ECW starts right around the 2 hour, 8 minute, 30 second mark of this video: https://www.c-span.org/video/?159189-1/marketing-violence-children-day-1

The video also is embedded here: https://ecwwrestling.com/trivia/day-that-new-jacks-action-figure-was-displayed-in-a-us-congressional-session

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Interestingly, according to Wikipedia's page on the Hardcore Revolution game, "It was the first wrestling game to be based on ECW, as well as the first professional wrestling video game to receive a Mature rating from the ESRB, although the Game Boy Color version was rated Everyone."

This video shows a commercial which aired mentioning the game's "M" rating:

You can see all of the original ECW action figures on this page: https://ecwwrestling.com/action-figures

If you are interested in learning more about the OSFTM ECW New Jack action figure, including a rare version, then here are some videos on the topic:

(post thumbail image credit taken from the C-SPAN video clip - taken for historical purposes only)

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Oh this is very interesting. I actually had no idea of this. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

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Thanks! I remember that I was home that day for some reason and was going through cable channels (!!); and I just happened to be going through C-SPAN when I saw this. The timing couldn't have been any better (ha!). I don't know if WWF (now WWE) had similar issues with the FTC and discrepancies between its violent content yet marketing action figures to children. If anyone has an update on what (if anything) the FTC did regarding the ECW figures/video game rating discrepancy then please share what you found.

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