Why I Hate Barbie
It has nothing to do with the "unrealistic body image" stuff. I don't buy into that notion--that girls who play with Barbies somehow think that they have to be like a Barbie doll. I think good parenting negates that mindset.
No, the reason I hate Barbie is all in the packaging. As the father of a girl, I have had multiple opportunities over the years to wrestle 11-inch plastic women (and occasionally men) from cardboard-and-plastic boxes, and I have this question to ask: What the hell do they think they're protecting? It's a $10 doll, not the Ark Of The Covenant, but the damn things are wired down at waist, arms and legs, the hair is sewed down, tabbed in with plastic AND taped down, the accessories are wired in and the clothes are sewed down and taped in. It takes a good fifteen minutes to get doll and accoutrements free, and you've got a pile of crap to deal with after you're done.
I'm bringing this up now because one of Lani's gifts this year was a Barbie, NM-in-box, from 1997. We just got around to opening it, and it was almost like a breath of fresh air: six or seven wires, two threads and one bit of tape. It was almost no fuss at all.
I'm at a loss to explain just what the heck it is Mattel thinks it's accomplishing.
No, the reason I hate Barbie is all in the packaging. As the father of a girl, I have had multiple opportunities over the years to wrestle 11-inch plastic women (and occasionally men) from cardboard-and-plastic boxes, and I have this question to ask: What the hell do they think they're protecting? It's a $10 doll, not the Ark Of The Covenant, but the damn things are wired down at waist, arms and legs, the hair is sewed down, tabbed in with plastic AND taped down, the accessories are wired in and the clothes are sewed down and taped in. It takes a good fifteen minutes to get doll and accoutrements free, and you've got a pile of crap to deal with after you're done.
I'm bringing this up now because one of Lani's gifts this year was a Barbie, NM-in-box, from 1997. We just got around to opening it, and it was almost like a breath of fresh air: six or seven wires, two threads and one bit of tape. It was almost no fuss at all.
I'm at a loss to explain just what the heck it is Mattel thinks it's accomplishing.
posted by Robert at
5:14 PM
3 Comments:
I just worked on a deal with Mattel and their contracts are like that, too. :)
By
Anonymous, at 9:30 PM
The person that put all that together is making 18 cents an hour. The next step up the ladder is circuit board wiring at 20 cents an hour.. Gotta have some basic training there.
By
Anonymous, at 1:00 AM
Doll or no doll, all toys these days are so tethered inside their packagin that I'm not sure the toy companies actually want them to come out at all.
db
By
Anonymous, at 10:20 AM
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