Walmart has pulled copies of the Superbad DVD that contained a promotional "McLovin" Hawaii license after Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann objected to the item. The "license" appears to be made with a

Walmart responded. "When this situation was brought to our attention we immediately looked into the matter," said Wal-Mart spokesman Lorenzo Lopez to the Honolulu Advertiser. "We have pulled all of the exclusive bonus movie packs that contained the ID item from our store shelves in Hawai'i." When asked if they would be expanding the recall to include other states, Walmart told the Star-Bulletin that the card "has a shifting, dual photograph and other features to make clear it's not a real I.D."

"We regret that it has caused concerns in Hawaii or elsewhere. This was a one-time promotion and no further shipments are planned."

Our first instinct was to say that no one would ever be stupid enough to try to pass a lenticular "McLovin" ID as real, but then we remembered that there is currently an Federal agents have announced that they've busted a smuggling ring that brought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of knockoff products into the US, says the NYT.

The charges, revealed yesterday in a complaint issued in Federal District Court in Manhattan, followed a yearlong investigation in which an undercover customs agent posed as a longshoremen's union official and took nearly $500,000 in bribes to let the illegal shipments pass through the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in New Jersey.

The undercover agent had nearly daily contact with the smugglers, who included Chinese manufacturers, a customs broker and a husband-and-wife team that owned a Brooklyn trucking company, officials said.

While officials declined to say how the investigation started, the complaint said that in August 2006, Michael Chu, 70, of Manhattan, approached the undercover agent and asked for his help in moving the illegal containers through the port. Mr. Chu paid the agent $100,000 in cash bribes to smuggle about 20 containers carrying fake consumer goods with a value of more than $24 million, the complaint said. Some of the fake products included Coach wallets, Burberry handbags, Ralph Lauren clothing and Nike shoes. The shoes were listed on ship manifests as "refrigerated noodles." Ew. You'd like to think that labeling something as food would attract more attention, not less. Yuck.
Consumer Reports warns us that knockoffs aren't just found on the streets of NYC, where peddlers push fake Gucci and Prada bags to giggling tourists. There are now "brake pads made of kitty litter, sawdust, and dried grass; power strips, extension cords, and smoke alarms with phony Underwriters Laboratories (UL) marks; medical test kits that give faulty readings; toothpaste made with a chemical found in antifreeze; and cell-phone batteries that could explode. Online drugstores claiming to operate from Canada but actually based in other countries have peddled "Lipitor" and "Celebrex" pills stored under uncontrolled conditions and containing the wrong active ingredients."

Watch what you're buying on eBay and at the "dollar store!"

Apparently there's some debate about whether or not it's more eco-friendly to buy a real Christmas tree every year or a fake one once every billion years or so.

For a totally biased argument, we turn to the National Christmas Tree Association's website, where they compare real trees to fake ones. Real trees, they say, are 100% biodegradable, PVC free, (often) grown locally, and are "carbon neutral."

Also, they smell nice.

All in all, people are going to buy whichever they like better, but now you real tree aficionados will have a bunch of talking points to unleash upon friends who disagree with you. That's what Christmas is all about.

The FCC, always a source of amusement for this website, has decided to crack down on Comcast for broadcasting VNRs or "Video News Releases." VNRs are produced by PR firms for use as filler by lazy TV news producers. It's a great deal for TV: They get free content and don't have to deal with the pressure of doing their jobs properly, and the company gets product placement. Consumers are the only losers.

The FCC filing says that a complaint was filed by the Center for Media and Democracy alleging that on September 21, 2006, Comcast broadcast a VNR for Nelson's Rescue Sleep without providing the sponsorship identification required by law. Comcast argues that they're not covered under that law because they didn't receive any compensation for showing the VNR.

The VNR in question was shoehorned into a daily "consumer issues" segment on the CN8 show "Art Fennel Reports." From the FCC: CN8's cablecast featuring "Nelson's Rescue Sleep" was part of a daily segment on "Art Fennell Reports"