Argos has promised to investigate after a mum said her young children were subjected to images of hardcore pornography as they settled down to watch a Disney movie on a new DVD player.
Samantha John, 25, from Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, had bought the £19.99 player from an Argos store as an Easter present for her children aged six, four and one.
She wired it to the family's widescreen TV - but before she could insert a Disney film into the machine a 'disgusting' image flashed up on screen in front of her family.
It was offering three different pornographic movies and showed an explicit picture from each of the films.
Stunned Samantha told her local paper: "I panicked - I could not believe my eyes. It was not something you would want your children to see - it was disgusting. I was desperately looking for the off button on the DVD player but because it was new I couldn't find it.
"My eldest was saying: 'What's that mummy?' I didn't know what to say. I just lunged forward at the TV and switched it off at the mains.
"I feel as if my children's innocence has been taken away from them."
She said when she bought the player she noticed there was no remote control in the box - or any instruction leaflet.
She said:"'It looked new but obviously someone had been using it to watch an explicit adult movie. And from what I saw on the screen it was very explicit."
Samantha ejected the DVD to find a white disk with the letters 'XXX' on it. She is now worried her little girls Kady, six, Natalya, four and Kyla, one, will be left damaged by the images.
She said: "They have hundreds of DVDs but I had bought them The Tooth Fairy and Marmaduke to go with the DVD.
"I am shocked and upset that they could have ended up watching something else altogether. What if I hadn't been in the room?"
A spokesman for Argos said: "Argos is a family retailer and we were extremely concerned to learn of this incident. We have asked the customer to return the player to our store so we can carry out an urgent investigation."