Channel 9 News Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Refurbishing is an art, as well as a craft. The whole point is to make a gadget feel pristine, even when it used to be owned by a cult leader, a scout leader or an exhibitionist.

Sadly, someone in a Colorado GameStop stopped refurbishing before the job was complete.

So much so that 5-year-old Braydon Giles opened his Xmas gift -- a Nintendo 3DS -- and discovered images of naked people doing less than pristine things. As Channel 9 News tells it, Braydon showed the 3DS to his brother Bryton. He wanted his help to remove these weird pictures.

Bryton Giles told 9 News: "He said that he didn't take these pictures so I went over to these pictures and I see two people in a bed. I told my dad and I said dad this has porn on it and he got up and went right to the phone."

One can imagine that the phone call wasn't entirely imbued with glad tidings. Mark Giles was extremely upset that GameStop had sold him such a device.

The company immediately admitted something had gone wrong. They reportedly told him the images had been put there by a previous owner.

Braydon was given a brand new 3DS and some games. GameStop also issued this statement:

GameStop is currently researching this situation. We have a rigorous quality control process in place to ensure that existing content is removed from all devices before they are re-sold. Out of millions of transactions each year, ones like this happen very rarely. Our number one priority is to make this right for our customer.

Mark Giles, though, believes the damage can never be undone. His son saw what he saw. "You can't un-see this. He's five years old. Maybe when he's 18 or 20 maybe he won't know anything about it but he's not going to forget about it tomorrow," he told 9 News.

Somehow, when gadgets come into the hands of stores, odd things can happen.

There was an incident earlier this year, when a Best Buy employee was accused of copying a woman's racy photos and suggesting that the customer come by to his house to collect a CD of the photos.

Another Best Buy employee was accused of outing a customer as gay (even though he isn't), after the customer had left his phone at the store for repair.

It's odd to think that the previous owner of the Nintendo might have forgotten that those images were on the machine. Just as it's odd to think that the refurbisher didn't spot them, but a 5-year-old did.