Columnist Susan Snyder: New slots littered with problems

Tuesday, June 8, 2004 | 9:01 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Garfield: The Tragedy.

Nevada Gaming Control Board members have approved a proposal to place cartoon cat Garfield on slot machines.

Talk about an effective deterrent to compulsive gambling. If they fashion the machines so that every jackpot-winner must listen to punch lines from five Garfield cartoons before collecting the cash, those slot addicts will be running into the streets screaming.

The premiere of "Garfield: The Movie" is on the horizon (Friday, for those who have too much money and too little imagination). And even though Wendy's restaurants are reportedly going to have Garfield toys in their kids' meals, gaming-board officials still said Garfield is an icon for adults.

Which adults? The type who get a guffaw from this June 1 installment:

Panel 1: Garfield says, "(Sigh)."

Panel 2: Garfield says, "I have nothing to celebrate."

Panel 3: Garfield dances and says, "For the 100th day in a row!"

Yuk-yuck.

Now, I thought Garfield was funny when Jim Davis first unveiled the orange, tiger-striped cartoon cat in 1978. Maybe it was because Davis' back yard used to abut ours in Muncie, Ind., when Davis was still drawing backgrounds as an assistant to "Tumbleweeds" cartoonist Tom K. Ryan.

Or maybe Garfield was funnier at first. Maybe it's because I was 17 and up to that point had dwelled nowhere but Muncie, Ind. -- a veritable ho-hum hotbed of the Midwest. Laughing kept us awake.

Gaming-board officials had similar discussions when they were asked to approve Betty Boop and the Pink Panther as slot characters. An amendment to a 2000 regulation, which bans slot machine use of themes that target primarily children, allows the use of any character more than 21 years old.

We'll ignore the fact -- since state gaming officials ignored it too -- that the www.garfield.com Web site is geared toward children and also promotes the programs, scholarships and other opportunities the cartoonist and his company provide for children.

We will, instead, focus on the adult draw. Let's have a look at another strip, this one from the Web site's May 5 archive:

Panel 1: Jon says, "There are claw marks on the couch."

Panel 2: Garfield says, "Whoa! And I just clawed the couch."

Panel 3: Garfield says, "That's a spooky coincidence, huh?"

Huh?

It seems odd that we worry about putting cartoon characters on slot machines that a child can't see unless his parents take him into casinos, from which he is banned.

We don't worry about him gazing upon women's bare butts plastered across taxicabs or half-naked women splayed across billboards in provocative poses. And he sees those from the comfort of his booster seat in Mom's minivan.

In a comment to Las Vegas' Other Paper last week, the lawyer representing Garfield slot-maker, Mikohn Gaming Corp., said he showed Garfield cartoons to his 7-year-old daughter.

And she didn't think they were funny.

I'm thinking if we want kids to stay away from slot machines, we probably should put Garfield on all of them.