This is a call to all parents, grandparents, oblivious aunts and uncles and semi-autonomous caring machines who have been put in charge of children; please stop buying licensed crap!

Yahoo News revealed earlier today that Happy Feet, Midway's cash-grab based on an animated film about penguins, has shipped 1.8 million copies. Yes, you read that correctly, 1.8 million.

That is exactly 1.8 million homes around the world where children are going to get their first taste of hatred for the adults in their lives. Properly nurtured by angst-filled music and the harshities of teenage life, these kids will undoubtedly turn to the sad existence of the goth before ending their lives one night while blitzed on Sharpie markers and the intoxicating lyrics of Avenged Sevenfold. Your unwillingness to seek out a proper game for your child instead of just pumping them full of the flavor-of-the-month licensed crap ended in you having to sponge their brains off of the faux-wood panelling in your split-level ranch home. Happy now?

Hit the jump for a deeper glimpse into the horrors of truth.

It's not too late though, your kids need not go down the road of black nail polish and virginity until their 20s. Instead of picking up the latest animated-film-turned-game you see immediately shouting to you from the shelves, go pick up any game from Nintendo. It doesn't matter which one, just pick up anything with a Mario or a Yoshi on the cover. Your kid really is too stupid to know the difference at this point, but much like rearing him on vegetables and fruits instead of sugar and heroin, providing a solid gaming background for your young one will lead to a lifelong love for the quality things in life.

Of course, this is all hypothetical since your presence here at Destructoid almost guarantees that you have better taste than the average Walmart dwelling mother from Middle America who would still be two hundred pounds overweight even if you could pry those six forty pound growths she calls her children off of her varicose-vein-riddled calves. Sadly, I can not have the same amount of faith in your relatives. Your sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, anyone who could theoretically be in charge of a child at some point badly needs your help. If you care at all for the future of humanity, you will present to them this article, and, if necessary, act out certain parts. Don't try to imitate my voice, it's simply too authoritative and majestic, but feel free to interpret this in words your loved ones can understand. Small words with few syllables work best.

It is up to us to stem this abhorrent tide of shit from roiling over it's bargain-bin-banks and choking the industry out with wave after disgusting wave of licensed refuse.