Somehow, while I was searching for another thing, I found myself on YouTube, watching freaky, creepy doll advertising. It was interesting in a purely clinical way. Look at this one, for example.
I don't design dolls and so I am not especially familiar with what little girls are craving for doll-wise but this one makes me feel sorry. Also I think there's an implied threat, "a doll that cries for five minutes unless you STOP her." By grabbing his head and wagging it back and forth. Harder!
Part doll- part giraffe. Some tarty-looking French girl towering over your trembling child with those piercing laser-blue eyes.This is the source of some terrifying nightmares, I bet.
Even the commercial's script is sort of jarring. The voice of a girl but more like a young Lindsey Lohan."Hey, did you ever wonder how I always know what to say next? Well, I'm smart.. just like you. When we're having a conversation, I listen to how you reply to my questions and then, I know just what to say."
Talking about giving children the wrong messages. But you can't argue with a successful strategy like that. It's worked for a lot of girls, like Sarah Palin, for instance.
That poor doll wouldn't have lasted a full day around my home. Somebody would have silenced that maddening laughter before the time the Christmas tree was even hauled off to the curb. (I'd bet it would have been an adult.)
By the way, when Baby-Laughs-a Lot's batteries run down she sounds like a drunken retired merchant marine (fat and hairy) at 2 in the morning at the Pink Palace Hideout. See for yourself. http://youtu.be/dGb03PO8B1U
This is like the advertising for a horror film- one I might actually enjoy too. I swear the first time I watched this, I thought the doll said, "I want to kill you something." This is how it started, sharing her dirty little secrets with her dolls and then suddenly, she's smoking in the high school bathroom.
Okay, it not a advert, I know. But I couldn't resist this little cock-eyed Twitch the Electric doll. Women, I'll let you in on a little secret: This is how most men think of babies. The only thing, men usually just walk away when the baby falls on its forehead like that.
Finally, there's this one. I couldn't make much sense of the script, but I think it reads:
Baby Pirulin Pee Pee, have a drink. Oh how happy, little thing. He’s laughing. He’ll start laughing when you tickle him. Let me do it. His little willy moves and he’s going to pee pee. Pee pee. You’re going to laugh with him. Naughty, naughty.
This is a doll that would have made most of America's Bible Belt flip their wigs and foam at the mouth. Personally, while I have never been called a prude, I do think it is a bit more detail than necessary for a any seven year old girl. (It might be better for parental training classes. Face shields not included.)
One commenter on the Youtube feedback made an interesting observation. In response to all those people saying, "Don't be so puritanical. It's natural," She/he replied, "Would you really think it was perfectly normal if it were two boys standing over a female doll with perfectly replicated sex organs?" (there I said it!)
OMG I can't believe I missed this post. Except now I'm pretty sure I won't sleep tonight.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that's funny is that twitching doll that kept falling over is the most realistic of the lot. That's kind of what a just-learning-to-walk kid is like-- insane giggling and falling over, and you can't catch him even when you're standing right there.
The Pee-Pee doll is funny too- definitely wouldn't fly in the US, but maybe it's geared towards girls who have to look after baby brothers and the sorts of things they experience? The commercial is probably aimed at the girls who would like to get back at their dads for never changing diapers.
Baby boys totally do that (rising wee-wee and all) and it's only funny if you're the one not doing the changing. I had a doll called baby alive who "ate" food you gave her (colored goo mixed from a powder) and "drank" from a bottle. Whatever she ate or drank came out a decidedly anatomically incorrect hole where her perineum should have been. When I ran out of the colored goo powder she came with, I tried giving her flour paste and that was the end of her amazing abilities.
Good thing she wasn't more realistic with the poo. Babies can do this awful poo-shooting thing just as you lift them to slip the diaper under. LE's record poo-shoot was about 4 feet, and that wasn't even the best of the other kids in his playgroup (oh yeah, we totally compared that).
The doll industry has a history of making "real" babies though. My grandmother, as a child in the '20s, had a doll that came with a coffin so you'd have a place to put it when it died, as babies did all the time in her day... Super creepy, no?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKoQvo_mlAQ This? This must be a later model.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOP2GOcQ0oM&feature=related
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