The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Oct. 30

Baby Einstein Inanity

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Leave it to Disney(DIS Quote) to do something goofy.

The Walt Disney Co. revealed last Friday it is escalating its refund program for its "Baby Einstein" videos in response to accusations about the legitimacy of its educational claims. The Mouse House is upgrading a customer satisfaction plan offering cash back on any DVDs purchased from June 5, 2004 to Sept. 4 of this year. Buyers can also swap the videos for a "Baby Einstein" book or music CD, or receive 25% off a "Little Einstein" product.

Oh, Mickey. Say it isn't so. We were so certain that you were turning America's toddlers into little atom-splitters. And now this?

The "Baby Einstein" brand was founded in 1997 by Julie Ainger-Clark, a mother and former educator, and was bought by Disney in 2001. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a Boston-based advocacy group, has been hounding Disney for years to stop claiming its DVD's could teach words to babies under two years old, only to be steamrolled by the creator of Steamboat Willie.

In May 2006, the group took its case to the Federal Trade Commission, saying claims made on "Baby Einstein" packaging and the Web site were not supportable by scientific research. The commission decided in December 2007 to take no formal action after investigating the matter, so the advocacy group threatened a class-action lawsuit against Disney in a letter to CEO Robert Iger in June 2008.

Now they are reveling in their hard fought "victory" over the Mouse House.

"We believe that this is an acknowledgment that baby videos are not educational," said Susan Linn, a psychologist and director of the campaign.

Maybe Disney should have done some product testing beforehand. Clearly the videos didn't help Donald Duck with his speech. And we've never heard Pluto speak at all.

Dumb-o-meter score: 95 -- What a letdown. Next they'll tell us a trip to Space Mountain won't get our kids into NASA.