Is Sexting Scandal Reason Enough to Stop Eating at Subway?

Editor’s Note: The following article contains specific descriptions of The Mick’s distasteful content. Please be aware of this as you read.

The Parents Television Council is urging Subway to clean up its advertising buys by avoiding Fox’s The Mick, which has featured child characters “sexting,” discussing child pornography and having threesomes, among other adult content. The show is consistently rated TV-14 by Fox, meaning that the network believes this content is appropriate for children as young as 14.

Subway has sponsored five episodes of The Mick.

“Given its embarrassing experience with a former company spokesperson, you would think that Subway would, at all costs, avoid associating its brand with a TV show that makes light of child pornography and other explicit adult content, and that routinely features child actors delivering that adult content,” said PTC President Tim Winter.

“Advertisers must take responsibility for the TV programs they underwrite via their media dollars, and Subway must be held accountable for marketing grotesquely inappropriate content on The Mick to children.

“Subway is paying to put kids in sexualized situations, and that content is being marketed to families as kid-friendly. We are urging our members and other concerned citizens to contact Subway and ask them to reconsider future sponsorship of this show.”

This is a description of some of the content Subway has sponsored on The Mick:

• A boy of about 13 plans to have two adult men photograph him naked so he can falsely accuse his guardian’s boyfriend of possessing child pornography.
• A teenage boy receives a “sext” and fantasizes about the girl in the photo—only to discover it is his own sister.
• A middle-school-aged boy plans a threesome with a high-school aged girl and his best friend. The two boys are shown in a bathtub together while waiting for the girl to join them.
• A boy of 6 or 7 ingests a drug-filled balloon. {eoa}