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How Barbie Doll Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Wait wait, wait, wait wait, um, we
0:14
Speaker 1: have to talk about our TV show. That's right. We
0:18
Speaker 1: have a television show that's coming out on our beloved
0:21
Speaker 1: science channel UM. January nineteen at ten pm follows the
0:26
Speaker 1: premiere of Idiot Abroad Season three UM, and after Idiot
0:31
Speaker 1: Abroad at ten pm Eastern Standard Time will be the
0:33
Speaker 1: world debut of Stuff you Should Know, the TV show.
0:39
Speaker 1: Not one new episode, but two new episodes back to back,
0:43
Speaker 1: ten o'clock and ten thirty. That's right, Saturday night, January nineteenth.
0:47
Speaker 1: It's gonna be pretty neat. What are we doing? What
0:48
Speaker 1: are the people gonna see? Are they gonna see a
0:50
Speaker 1: game show, which we've been asked. Are they going to
0:52
Speaker 1: see a a reality show which we've been asked, No, Josh,
0:57
Speaker 1: They're seeing a scripted TV show that features the real
1:01
Speaker 1: us playing ourselves along with actors on a set that
1:05
Speaker 1: we recreated of our office. It's basically an office comedy
1:09
Speaker 1: about our lives as podcasters, featuring the podcasting itself and
1:14
Speaker 1: real knowledge and factual stuff. So we think it's a
1:17
Speaker 1: good combination of fun and humor and facts and uh,
1:22
Speaker 1: we think you'll like it. Yeah, we hope you'll like it.
1:24
Speaker 1: Um that's January nineteenth, Saturday, ten pm. Uh the world premiere.
1:30
Speaker 1: And uh, don't forget to check out Idiot Abroad season
1:33
Speaker 1: three absolutely premier before. Very funny show. And for those
1:36
Speaker 1: of you clamoring that you don't have TV or cable, you,
1:40
Speaker 1: if you have a computer device, can watch this on iTunes.
1:44
Speaker 1: Now you're going to be able to purchase these, I
1:47
Speaker 1: believe the day after each episode is released and go
1:50
Speaker 1: to iTunes, buy it for bucket and watch it on
1:54
Speaker 1: your laptop. Nice and Science Channel is so cool they're
1:59
Speaker 1: making the first episode available for free. Yeah, that's pretty
2:03
Speaker 1: awesome on iTunes, just to get your hooked. So we
2:07
Speaker 1: appreciate the support. And now on with the episode, sir, Yes, hey,
2:12
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
2:16
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant and that stuff. You should know. Two
2:20
Speaker 1: of us together, the anatomically Correct Doll Models version. I
2:25
Speaker 1: guess I called myself a doll model once in a while,
2:30
Speaker 1: a little perk, you know, very looking very kin like
2:34
Speaker 1: these days. Sure, um, hey man, not magic your akin, No,
2:40
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. Like shavedkin. UM. So, I know
2:45
Speaker 1: you know this, but I'll tell you again. Back when
2:48
Speaker 1: I was a little pup, I had this series of
2:50
Speaker 1: books that were very, very significant in my life, the
2:54
Speaker 1: Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. I would get one for Christmas
2:57
Speaker 1: every year and I would like go through it and
3:00
Speaker 1: first hour I had it and my legs would be
3:02
Speaker 1: numb in the bathroom. When you first got these, I
3:04
Speaker 1: think I started I was about twelve. I love that
3:07
Speaker 1: your parents knew that you were just a sponge for
3:09
Speaker 1: information even at that age. Yeah, I don't remember how
3:11
Speaker 1: I first came about it, but like I think somebody
3:13
Speaker 1: got it for him and they were blown away at
3:15
Speaker 1: how much I liked that. Um And it really helped
3:18
Speaker 1: shape me in many many ways and the way I
3:22
Speaker 1: understand things, the way I look at things like this
3:24
Speaker 1: general knowledge. I've had some right, some wrong, but like
3:28
Speaker 1: it's been a big deal what you do in the
3:30
Speaker 1: bathroom reading. UM. So, this this episode is kind of
3:35
Speaker 1: special to me because all this material we're doing, how
3:39
Speaker 1: Barbie Doll works, almost all the materials from Uncle John's
3:45
Speaker 1: Bathroom Reader. They got in touch with us and gave
3:48
Speaker 1: us everything they have M Barbie, and we compiled it
3:51
Speaker 1: into this podcast, and we actually have a special guest later,
3:55
Speaker 1: the founder of the Bathroom Reader Institute, Gordon Jovna, is
3:59
Speaker 1: going to be joining us on this to talk about
4:01
Speaker 1: Barbie two. Very excited and they're also kind enough to
4:03
Speaker 1: give us hats and I think shirts as well. Right, yeah,
4:07
Speaker 1: because they listened to us, and we found out they listened.
4:10
Speaker 1: I was like, you were kidding, Like the circle of
4:13
Speaker 1: life is complete, Like we hear from Mad Magazine, Archie comics,
4:17
Speaker 1: damn interesting, damn interesting? Have we heard from crack yet? No?
4:22
Speaker 1: We love them. They're They're the one people, the one people,
4:25
Speaker 1: the one group out there that I would like to
4:27
Speaker 1: contact us. That's it, just the one, just them. And like,
4:29
Speaker 1: very man, I've been whole enough for Obama. I know
4:32
Speaker 1: he listens. Don't even pretend Obama, just send us an email.
4:35
Speaker 1: Well yeah, you know, I remember when they released what
4:37
Speaker 1: was the contents of his iPod one year and we
4:40
Speaker 1: were both like, oh my god, we on it. We're
4:41
Speaker 1: on it, like of course we're not on it now
4:44
Speaker 1: still alright? Um oh and before we get storry, I
4:47
Speaker 1: want to give a shout out to one of our
4:49
Speaker 1: horror fiction contest entrants. Remember we said, if you publish something,
4:53
Speaker 1: let us know and we'll tell everybody. Um, Jay McMurray
4:56
Speaker 1: submitted his story The Mind Reader. It was very good. Yeah,
4:59
Speaker 1: that was a good one. And he's got it up
5:01
Speaker 1: on Amazon dot com and you can search um Jay McMurray,
5:06
Speaker 1: m C m U R R Y and the Mind
5:09
Speaker 1: Reader and it will bring it up for you. Um.
5:11
Speaker 1: He's self published. So it's pretty awesome. Awesome, So way
5:14
Speaker 1: to go, Jay, thanks for letting us know. Uh so, Barbie, Yes,
5:18
Speaker 1: it all started with a lady named Ruth Marianna who
5:22
Speaker 1: eventually became Ruth Handler. She grew up but I guess
5:27
Speaker 1: kind of poor in Denver, Colorado. Uh yeah, Well her
5:32
Speaker 1: mom was ill, and I have the feeling that it
5:35
Speaker 1: was just her mom. Yeah, so she ended up having
5:37
Speaker 1: to go live with her sister at a fairly young age. Yeah,
5:40
Speaker 1: and um, at a young age as well, met her husband,
5:44
Speaker 1: be Elliott, and they moved to California, as New Leo
5:47
Speaker 1: EDGs did in the nineteen thirties with you know, prosperous
5:51
Speaker 1: land out their opportunity and they had a very long
5:56
Speaker 1: lasting marriage and business partnership years for de great it
6:00
Speaker 1: is great. Um. Elliott turned out to have a knack
6:04
Speaker 1: for creating giftwear, specifically to start picture frames, wouldn't picture frames?
6:09
Speaker 1: And Ruth turned out to have a knack for marketing
6:12
Speaker 1: and merchandizing them. That's right. And uh they together for Mattel,
6:17
Speaker 1: which sounds familiar, I imagine. Yeah, well with Harold Mattson.
6:21
Speaker 1: That's where the matt came from. Nice and the l
6:24
Speaker 1: was Elliott, very nice. That's nice. And uh they also
6:29
Speaker 1: had a couple of kids named Barbie and Kent. Yeah,
6:32
Speaker 1: there you have it. We should just end it right
6:34
Speaker 1: there the end. That's how Barbie works. That's pretty cool.
6:36
Speaker 1: That was a nice little factoid. Well. I think one
6:38
Speaker 1: of the things that I think is interesting about Barbie
6:41
Speaker 1: is that the Barbie doll was directly inspired by Barbie
6:44
Speaker 1: handler Ruth's daughter, Um Barbie used to play with Barbie,
6:49
Speaker 1: the real girl used to play with dolls. She had
6:52
Speaker 1: like her little baby dolls, and she had, um, you know,
6:55
Speaker 1: little girl dolls or whatever, because that's all that was available.
6:58
Speaker 1: But she also played with paper doll and these paper
7:00
Speaker 1: dolls were kind of fashion dolls, so they were older,
7:02
Speaker 1: mature women, and they had different outfits and apparently Barbie
7:06
Speaker 1: was just crazy for him. So Ruth went to her
7:09
Speaker 1: colleagues at Mattel and said, we need to come up
7:11
Speaker 1: with a three dimensional doll that you can change outfit.
7:14
Speaker 1: It's going to be a huge hit. And all of
7:16
Speaker 1: the male suits poop poo did it's a boo boo,
7:19
Speaker 1: Sit down, get me some coffee, lady exactly. And UM
7:23
Speaker 1: she was like, all right, well fine, I'll see you
7:25
Speaker 1: all in Hell. Yeah. Well, they did poopoo it for
7:28
Speaker 1: a legitimate reason, though they said it was not possible
7:31
Speaker 1: to manufacture it. UM. I don't think it was just
7:33
Speaker 1: poopoo ing her idea, although there was probably some of
7:36
Speaker 1: that mixed in. UM. Luckily, Europe called and the handlers
7:41
Speaker 1: went on a European vacation and I think ninety six,
7:45
Speaker 1: and while they were in Looser in Switzerland, they were
7:47
Speaker 1: in some toy shop. I guess that happened to be
7:50
Speaker 1: selling a German doll called the Lily Doll. And Lily
7:55
Speaker 1: was based on a UM I guess you could call
7:57
Speaker 1: it a body comic strip. And this doll that was
8:01
Speaker 1: based on the strip was meant for men as maybe
8:06
Speaker 1: the like as a host's gift for a stag party
8:10
Speaker 1: or something like that. I get the impression you got
8:13
Speaker 1: him in shops of ill repute at the time. Did
8:16
Speaker 1: you look up Lily looks like Barbie, it looks like
8:19
Speaker 1: Marlene Dietrich. That kind of ripped it off, although I
8:22
Speaker 1: shouldn't say that because I might get sued. And we
8:24
Speaker 1: should also say, as you'll find out why in the
8:27
Speaker 1: Nazi distant future, that every time we say Barbie there
8:29
Speaker 1: is an implied registered trademark symbol following it. All rights
8:34
Speaker 1: to Mattel. We claim zero rights or copyrights on Barbie
8:38
Speaker 1: or her products. Right. So Lily was a prototype and um,
8:44
Speaker 1: you know, she was a grown up lady that you
8:45
Speaker 1: could change the clothes on. And she was like, you
8:48
Speaker 1: know what, this is what we've been wanting, this is
8:50
Speaker 1: what I've been waiting for. It's possible to manufacture these,
8:53
Speaker 1: and I want to make Barbies at Mattel because a
8:58
Speaker 1: woman has choices. In the fact that you can change
9:00
Speaker 1: your clothes proves it, right. It took a little convincing,
9:03
Speaker 1: but she got Mattel. The other guys at Mattel on board. Yeah,
9:07
Speaker 1: they resisted because the of the large breasts on the doll. Yeah,
9:10
Speaker 1: they basically said, no, mom's gonna buy a doll with
9:12
Speaker 1: breast for her daughter. Remember, there is nothing like this
9:15
Speaker 1: out there at the time, at least in America and
9:18
Speaker 1: even in Europe. The one doll that was like this
9:21
Speaker 1: that Barbie was based on was based on a sexy
9:24
Speaker 1: comic strip exactly, so it wasn't for little girls. So
9:27
Speaker 1: this is a really revolutionary idea for a handler would
9:30
Speaker 1: be like, no, no, Well they'll get past it, Like,
9:31
Speaker 1: this is what we need to do. Got Mattel on
9:34
Speaker 1: board and debuted this thing at the Toy Fair in
9:37
Speaker 1: New York City in nineteen nine and a zebra stripe
9:41
Speaker 1: striped bathing suit. Yes, very alluring, I guess, and her
9:45
Speaker 1: eyes were cast to the side. She can never meet
9:47
Speaker 1: your gaze, which as a sidebar, no, like it will
9:52
Speaker 1: never meet your gaze. The only way for no, the
9:55
Speaker 1: only way for eyes in a painting or on a
9:59
Speaker 1: doll to meet you is for them to already be
10:02
Speaker 1: painted looking ahead. If they're painted looking to the side,
10:05
Speaker 1: they'll never meet you. Well, unless you turn the doll
10:07
Speaker 1: to the sun. I'm telling you. You try you try it.
10:09
Speaker 1: You've told the story about the painting. Let's still disagree.
10:12
Speaker 1: So in the Shinto religion, um anything that has eyes,
10:16
Speaker 1: including a doll, can capture your spirit. So in Japan
10:20
Speaker 1: a lot of dolls are made with sideways looks so
10:23
Speaker 1: you can't look them in the eye. And every year
10:26
Speaker 1: and you keep your spirit at the right at the
10:28
Speaker 1: Meiji Shrine in Japan, they have a doll burning celebration
10:33
Speaker 1: where they burned unused, an unwanted dolls so that they
10:36
Speaker 1: can't get anybody. That's an environmental nightmare. So Barbie debuts
10:42
Speaker 1: in nine right, yes, they she goes to Sears because
10:46
Speaker 1: they sold tons of Mattel products at the time. Sea
10:49
Speaker 1: said this thing is too sexy. No one's gonna buy them.
10:52
Speaker 1: It's too sexy. So uh, Mattel turned out to be
10:56
Speaker 1: smarty Pants though, because five years later Barbie was a
11:00
Speaker 1: million dollar dollar I guess because of all the internet
11:02
Speaker 1: orders that they were getting, well the little kids. Finally
11:05
Speaker 1: some stores said yes, okay, we'll take them, and little
11:08
Speaker 1: Kids sold them. In that first year, Chuck, they sold
11:10
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty thousand of these things, and they
11:13
Speaker 1: were selling them for three bucks apiece, which I looked
11:15
Speaker 1: at three and two thousand eleven dollars. So there was
11:19
Speaker 1: a substantial amount of sales for the first year, so
11:22
Speaker 1: Rick Handler was proven right pretty much out of the gate. Yes,
11:25
Speaker 1: that is true. Um, the cool end of Ruth story
11:29
Speaker 1: actually not so cool because she died of cancer. But
11:32
Speaker 1: she um eventually got breast cancer, and when she was
11:36
Speaker 1: unable to find a breast prosthesis that she thought was
11:41
Speaker 1: was good enough, she said, you know what, I'm gonna
11:43
Speaker 1: make my own and I'm going to form a company
11:46
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna call it Nearly Me. And they manufactured
11:50
Speaker 1: breasts prosthesises for cancer survivors. Pretty cool. She sadly lost
11:54
Speaker 1: her battle, but I think she was like in her
11:56
Speaker 1: late eighties or mid eighties, and even after the Handlers
12:01
Speaker 1: were basically forced out of Mattel after some questionable earnings
12:05
Speaker 1: reports in the late seventies early eighties, she's still regarded
12:09
Speaker 1: like this titan of the toy industry, legend of this
12:13
Speaker 1: woman who like helped build Mattel from scratch and like
12:17
Speaker 1: made it what it is today. And I think Elliott
12:19
Speaker 1: just passed away last year. He lived into his nineties.
12:23
Speaker 1: So we have a few stats here, Uh, New Barbie
12:26
Speaker 1: All today sells approximately every three seconds. See just sold
12:30
Speaker 1: one another just sold one. Uh. It is a one
12:34
Speaker 1: point five billion dollar business for Mattel and the average
12:37
Speaker 1: girl from three to six has twelve of these. That
12:41
Speaker 1: is mind boggling. Number One Barbie from uh and called
12:45
Speaker 1: you about twenty seven grand these days, and uh what else?
12:51
Speaker 1: The best selling Barbie of all time was the totally
12:55
Speaker 1: hair Barbie who had hair from head to toe. It
12:58
Speaker 1: strikes me as strange. That's the best selling Barbie of
13:01
Speaker 1: all time. I looked it up. It's it's for guys
13:04
Speaker 1: like us. You look at this thing and say, wow,
13:05
Speaker 1: what a redneck doll like? Has anyone been into the
13:08
Speaker 1: Crystal Gale look since with the seventies? But I think
13:11
Speaker 1: little girls uh enjoyed like styling the hair, all that
13:15
Speaker 1: hair and all the hair that you could do all
13:17
Speaker 1: these interesting things with. So Barbie herself, if you want
13:20
Speaker 1: to know a little bit of a backstory, if anyone
13:23
Speaker 1: ever asks you, Barbie's full name, Barbie the doll, Yes,
13:26
Speaker 1: not the daughter. We're no longer talking about the doll. Now,
13:28
Speaker 1: we're talking about Barbie the doll in this weird fake history,
13:32
Speaker 1: and it's strange. It's a little weird. Yeah, that's why
13:35
Speaker 1: we went in and then we're coming back out for
13:37
Speaker 1: a second. But Barbie's real name is Barbara Millicent Roberts
13:41
Speaker 1: apparently um, which is my aunt's name, not her middle name.
13:44
Speaker 1: But her name is Barbie Roberts Um. And she hails
13:48
Speaker 1: from not my aunt, but the Barbie doll hails from Willows, Wisconsin. Yeah.
13:53
Speaker 1: And she has friends, specifically and most notably Ken Shawn Carson,
13:59
Speaker 1: who was induced in nineteen sixty one. They're both pisces
14:03
Speaker 1: I guess, like me, I think so. And they're both
14:07
Speaker 1: early March. Well I'm mid March. Another cut office sometime
14:10
Speaker 1: in March, though, so, but they were both born in March.
14:13
Speaker 1: We'll call him pisces um. And uh, Barbie has some relatives.
14:19
Speaker 1: Her best friend is Midge, by the way, who's been
14:21
Speaker 1: introduced a couple of times pregnant and really caused controversy
14:24
Speaker 1: both times. Yeah, one time with an actual baby in
14:27
Speaker 1: the belly that you could take out in the womb. Yeah.
14:31
Speaker 1: That it was. It's looked upon and Cracked Magazine as
14:34
Speaker 1: one of the horrific toys in history. I think it
14:38
Speaker 1: was necessary and educational, Alright. What was surprising to me
14:41
Speaker 1: was that she was pregnant and it caused the second
14:43
Speaker 1: time it caused waves as recently. It's like two thousand two,
14:47
Speaker 1: two two or two thousand and six, it was fairly recent.
14:50
Speaker 1: It seems the world still has hang ups about pregnancy
14:54
Speaker 1: for some reason. Well, it's probably a single woman pregnancy,
14:57
Speaker 1: probably not just the fact that she was pregnant. I
14:59
Speaker 1: don't think any has he prompts pregnancy. Um, you've also
15:02
Speaker 1: heard a skipper she uh was a sister she was
15:06
Speaker 1: the little Sister's debuted in nineteen. Then there's Stacy, Todd
15:10
Speaker 1: and Chelsea, who are named after the handler's grandchildren. Um,
15:15
Speaker 1: and then about Ken, he's gone through some transitions over
15:19
Speaker 1: the years. Is Malibu Kenna laid back dude, Magic Iran
15:23
Speaker 1: Kin who will talk about a little more in death
15:26
Speaker 1: shall we introduced in nineteen embraced by the gay community.
15:31
Speaker 1: And um, have you seen pictures? Oh yeah, yeah, he's
15:34
Speaker 1: got a do you not look up your earring? Magic Kin?
15:37
Speaker 1: Not this personing? I did uh see through kind of
15:41
Speaker 1: a sheer purple tank mesh mesh and uh there's a
15:46
Speaker 1: matching purple jacket and a medallion. Doesn't he have like
15:49
Speaker 1: a risk like corsage or something too? I didn't see
15:52
Speaker 1: that part he looked like a gay raver. Yeah we
15:56
Speaker 1: can say that. I mean, like dead on a gay raver.
15:59
Speaker 1: I don't want to into any rabs out there. And
16:02
Speaker 1: apparently the whole um this, the fact that the gay
16:07
Speaker 1: community bought a large portion of these things, was a
16:10
Speaker 1: big surprise to Mattel and they're like, wait, we didn't
16:13
Speaker 1: mean that. So they took it off the shelves. Well,
16:15
Speaker 1: they're pretty stupid, you know, registered trademark, registered trademark. They
16:20
Speaker 1: were making big sales. Uh. There had long been joking
16:25
Speaker 1: whispers about Kin's sexuality in pop culture, so when they
16:29
Speaker 1: made this one, I think people thought, all right, they're
16:32
Speaker 1: finally giving us like the real Kin. And then for
16:35
Speaker 1: them to yanket back off the shelves, it's like come on, yeah,
16:38
Speaker 1: Well that's the kind of a thread you'll see throughout
16:39
Speaker 1: is that Mattel is very protective of Barbie's image and
16:45
Speaker 1: by proxy Kin's image as well. Um, and apparently they
16:49
Speaker 1: don't think Ken's gay. Um. Kenn and Barbie broke up once,
16:53
Speaker 1: very famously in two thousand four. Yeah, and they got
16:56
Speaker 1: well after blaming the Australian surfer showed up. They just
16:59
Speaker 1: happened to break up then, but of course, like all
17:03
Speaker 1: noted lovers in history, they got back together in Valentine's
17:07
Speaker 1: on Valentine's State two thousand eleven. And apparently Barbie was
17:11
Speaker 1: even on match dot com for a little while, and
17:13
Speaker 1: Ken designed a cupcake for her at Magnolia Bakery and
17:17
Speaker 1: posted billboards asking for Barbie's hand again and together. Of course,
17:22
Speaker 1: she's never been married again. They got back together in
17:25
Speaker 1: Valentine's State two thousand eleven. That's right. What about her jobs,
17:29
Speaker 1: Barbie's a fact totem. She has done a lot of things.
17:33
Speaker 1: Fashion model, astronaut, hundred and thirty careers totalners, been a cop,
17:39
Speaker 1: a paleontologist. McDonald's franchise e was she franchise z? Because
17:44
Speaker 1: I saw the one where she worked to the drive through?
17:46
Speaker 1: It depends, Like if you really start thinking about Barbie,
17:49
Speaker 1: she owned the place, Okay, but that's a big difference,
17:52
Speaker 1: you know, of the image you're sending out, like is
17:54
Speaker 1: she a business owner or she's slinging fries. Well, she's
17:58
Speaker 1: also owned like tons of boutiques. Again, she owned that
18:01
Speaker 1: hot dog sand like pretty much everything she works at
18:04
Speaker 1: she's owned. I I that was the impression. I had
18:07
Speaker 1: race car driver, aerobics instructor. She owned aerobics right while
18:11
Speaker 1: she did it. She had a band, Barbie and the
18:14
Speaker 1: Rockers that formed. That's right. I have not heard any songs,
18:18
Speaker 1: but I should go look that up. And then animals,
18:21
Speaker 1: she said, more than fifty pets, first of which was
18:24
Speaker 1: a horse named Dancer. She said, twenty one dogs, twelve horses,
18:28
Speaker 1: three ponies, six cats, a parrot, a champ papanda, a lion, cub,
18:32
Speaker 1: a giraffe, and a zebra. And that is it for
18:35
Speaker 1: the fake history of Barbie. Because, um, if there's one
18:39
Speaker 1: thing about Barbie, it's that she collides with society, both
18:44
Speaker 1: in academic circles and pop culture like you said, and
18:47
Speaker 1: every aspect. Barbie has her her little plastic toes dipped
18:52
Speaker 1: in some part of our society at large for tiny
18:56
Speaker 1: little plastic does um. And probably the group that she's
19:00
Speaker 1: run a foul of the most are feminists, right, Yeah,
19:04
Speaker 1: and uh, this article makes a great point, like feminism
19:07
Speaker 1: and Barberly Barbarie and Barbie co evolved right about the
19:10
Speaker 1: same time in the nineteen early nineteen sixties, is when
19:14
Speaker 1: these things were going on. Yeah, um, Barbie came out
19:16
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine. Betty Friedan published The Feminist Mystique
19:19
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three. Right, so there they're just right there,
19:24
Speaker 1: head to head, intertwined at each other's throats for pretty
19:29
Speaker 1: much the whole time. Yeah, because, um, a feminist will
19:32
Speaker 1: point out Barbie is, her figure is ridiculous, she's wealthy,
19:37
Speaker 1: she's vapid, she's materialistic. Girls shouldn't even be playing with
19:41
Speaker 1: this thing because it sends all the wrong messages, possibly
19:44
Speaker 1: dangerous messages. Um. And there are times when Mattel's kind
19:50
Speaker 1: of made the point for feminists or just any critic
19:54
Speaker 1: of Barbie specifically ten Talk Barbie. Yeah, bad for them
20:00
Speaker 1: sometimes with the stuff because they've made some terrible mistakes
20:03
Speaker 1: a lot, I know, but you get I don't know.
20:05
Speaker 1: You just picture like an out of touch board room
20:07
Speaker 1: and they're trying to do the right thing and it
20:09
Speaker 1: just blows up in their face over and over. So, uh,
20:13
Speaker 1: Team Talk Barbie. Yeah, they recorded Uh this Barbie could
20:16
Speaker 1: talk back to you thanks to a computer microchip, and
20:20
Speaker 1: it would say four phrases, and they had two hundred
20:22
Speaker 1: and seventy phrases total, and each doll got four at
20:26
Speaker 1: random I love shopping, Let's have a pizza party, or
20:30
Speaker 1: the one percent of dolls math class is tough, which
20:33
Speaker 1: is a pretty high percentage for just one thing. So
20:36
Speaker 1: like the worst thing that Team Talk Barbie could have
20:39
Speaker 1: said ended up in the most dolls. Yeah. Uh and
20:43
Speaker 1: of course, um that perpetuated the girls are bad at
20:47
Speaker 1: math thing in the American Association of University Women said
20:51
Speaker 1: we don't like perpetuating these stereotypes. Mattel said, fine, you
20:55
Speaker 1: know what, We'll pull these and if you got one
20:57
Speaker 1: of these, uh I don't like math doll, you can
21:00
Speaker 1: send it in and get another one. But it was
21:03
Speaker 1: kind of too late, and then the best thing in
21:04
Speaker 1: history happened. Yeah, the Barbie Liberation Organization uh struck. They
21:10
Speaker 1: bought hundreds of teen talk Barbies, and they also apparently
21:13
Speaker 1: bought hundreds of talking Duke G I Joe action figures
21:16
Speaker 1: and they switched the microchips out in them. So awesome,
21:20
Speaker 1: and then they took them back. Uh. So, a lot
21:23
Speaker 1: of little girls got barbies that said things like vengeance
21:26
Speaker 1: is Mine and a lot of little boys got G I.
21:29
Speaker 1: Joe's that said things like, let's plan our dream wedding.
21:32
Speaker 1: That's pretty great. And there's actually a really excellent version
21:35
Speaker 1: of this saga that's told in a Simpsons episode Lisa
21:38
Speaker 1: versus Malibu. Stacey, Remember that got all this background based
21:43
Speaker 1: on Ruth Handler and Mattel Barbie and and this m
21:47
Speaker 1: Barbie Liberation organization. I'm glad you mentioned that that I've
21:50
Speaker 1: forgotten all about that. That's such a good Episode's a
21:52
Speaker 1: good one, Lisa, lion heart. So, uh, Mattel and Um
21:59
Speaker 1: and Ruth have always shot back or countered, maybe more politely.
22:05
Speaker 1: They're not shrinking violence when you know the feminists are
22:08
Speaker 1: on them. No, they say, you know what, Barbie was
22:10
Speaker 1: created by women. Barbie has always had you know, jobs
22:17
Speaker 1: sometimes male traditional male jobs. Yeah, they say, she she
22:20
Speaker 1: she breaks the plastic ceiling. Yeah, like she was day night,
22:24
Speaker 1: day to night CEO Barbie, UM, Barbie for President, astronaut
22:29
Speaker 1: Barbie UM. And they basically said, you know what, she's
22:33
Speaker 1: never been married, she never had kids. Barbie is a feminist, right,
22:39
Speaker 1: although I bet a lot of feminists would argue back,
22:41
Speaker 1: and they have been for years. Well yeah, but some
22:43
Speaker 1: feminists also actually grudgingly support Barbie as a champion of
22:47
Speaker 1: women's right. So there's this one article I read by
22:50
Speaker 1: by Deb Moore Hennicky. It's called rethinking Barbie. And she
22:54
Speaker 1: points out that quote Kendall's come in several outfits, but
22:57
Speaker 1: really he's just there. If Barbie happens to want to
23:00
Speaker 1: go on a date, she does not stand around waiting
23:02
Speaker 1: for Ken to show up, or she needs someone to
23:04
Speaker 1: go shopping with her to help her pick up friends
23:06
Speaker 1: for that, And the next sentence she basically said, like
23:09
Speaker 1: she goes shopping with her friends, she basically does whatever
23:11
Speaker 1: she wants, you know. Um, so she's no, she's no
23:14
Speaker 1: lackey for Ken. And they'll also point out that, you
23:18
Speaker 1: know what, before we came along, it was just like
23:21
Speaker 1: baby dolls, and all it said was here you can
23:24
Speaker 1: only be a mother to a child or have a
23:28
Speaker 1: little imaginary best friend, little girl doll. There were no
23:31
Speaker 1: adult dolls that had adult jobs and thinking like adult jobs.
23:34
Speaker 1: But know yeah, and even from the outset me um,
23:37
Speaker 1: Ruth Handler created Barbie with the idea that little girls
23:41
Speaker 1: could use this older doll to imagine themselves in their
23:46
Speaker 1: life and maybe hopefully make a better path for themselves. Um,
23:51
Speaker 1: and that's kind of been a point of Barbie all along.
23:54
Speaker 1: And there's actually There's this one study out of Washington
23:56
Speaker 1: and Lee in two thousand ten that supported that that
24:00
Speaker 1: down that when the groups of little girls were showing
24:02
Speaker 1: a Barbie doll getting into, um, the outfit of like
24:07
Speaker 1: a male dominated occupation, like firefighter, they tended to report
24:13
Speaker 1: that they could grow up to be a firefighter too. So,
24:16
Speaker 1: I mean there is support for that very much. Um.
24:19
Speaker 1: But still there's a lot of easy shots that one
24:23
Speaker 1: can take a Mattel is, you know, basically making Barbie
24:28
Speaker 1: a sexualized doll. Yeah, but I mean since the very
24:32
Speaker 1: beginning until yesterday, this has been going on, and it's
24:36
Speaker 1: just one of those lifelong battles. Mattel is never gonna
24:39
Speaker 1: back down, and I'm sure the feminist probably won't either.
24:44
Speaker 1: Studies aside, everyone has their opinion on Barbie. Yeah, And
24:48
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point about Barbie. I
24:50
Speaker 1: feel like she is a giant mirror for society, everything
24:56
Speaker 1: that's wrong with it, everything that's right with it it
24:58
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at Barbie, and on a
25:00
Speaker 1: much more micro cosmic level, depending on how an individual
25:04
Speaker 1: little girl plays with Barbie, she can be a you know,
25:08
Speaker 1: a tool for aspiration or something that teaches the girl
25:12
Speaker 1: all the wrong things. That's good point. Yeah, all right,
25:15
Speaker 1: So we should talk about Barbie and race because Mattel
25:19
Speaker 1: has also like made some missteps over the years when
25:23
Speaker 1: it comes to the cringe yeah, cringe worthy episode coming up. Uh.
25:28
Speaker 1: In ninety seven, they conceived of a black friend for
25:31
Speaker 1: Barbie and they called her colored Francie. I know, Um,
25:39
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how well that went over. It's hard
25:41
Speaker 1: to tell now because it sounds so ridiculous, but I
25:43
Speaker 1: don't know how it was received at the time. I
25:45
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything on that. Um, apparently not that great
25:49
Speaker 1: because Colored francis not around any longer. Well, their follow
25:52
Speaker 1: up wasn't that much better. In eight they came out
25:56
Speaker 1: with Black Barbie. That's what they called it. Yep, Black Barbie.
26:00
Speaker 1: Black Barbie. Ken came out two years later African American
26:04
Speaker 1: Ken sun Stational Malibuchan in was was was black and
26:08
Speaker 1: Um the problem was until two thousand nine, until three
26:13
Speaker 1: years ago. One of the problems, one of the problems,
26:16
Speaker 1: aside from the naming conventions, uh, is that they still
26:20
Speaker 1: use the quote unquote white dolls and just made the
26:23
Speaker 1: skin tone darker. Yeah, and they they didn't change any
26:27
Speaker 1: other aspect of the doll until three years ago when
26:30
Speaker 1: they finally, um made African American barbies Kara, Grace and Trichelle,
26:36
Speaker 1: and they had designs apparently to replicate features of real
26:41
Speaker 1: African American women. Finally, and have you seen these dolls
26:44
Speaker 1: I have? Yeah, they're great. One of them looks sort
26:46
Speaker 1: of like Beyonce. Um that one that two thousand and
26:50
Speaker 1: ten Washington Least study that we mentioned. That author also
26:54
Speaker 1: started to wonder like, how does what Barbie doesn't? How
26:58
Speaker 1: does what Barbie isn't doing? A acting little girls as well? Yeah,
27:03
Speaker 1: so the point she made was, Um, if a young
27:06
Speaker 1: African American girl goes into a store and um, like,
27:10
Speaker 1: there's not a black president Barbie, right, what does that
27:14
Speaker 1: tell her? Sure, there's just the white president Barbie. That's
27:18
Speaker 1: a good point. Um Again, prepare for cringing, because, like
27:23
Speaker 1: you said, apparently Mattel's boardroom exists in a in a
27:26
Speaker 1: cultural vacuum. So uh in they got a ring and
27:31
Speaker 1: ding from Nabisco who said, hey, we need to move
27:34
Speaker 1: some Oreos, so why don't you guys make an Oreo
27:36
Speaker 1: theme Barbie? And they said, sure. Problem we should point
27:39
Speaker 1: out they've done a lot of deals with companies over
27:42
Speaker 1: the years. Yeah, so this wasn't anything bigger, Newer cook Barbie,
27:46
Speaker 1: Pepsi Barbie, Nascar Barbie. It seems like anytime they have
27:49
Speaker 1: a new you know, I mean I have a Barbie.
27:51
Speaker 1: Do you really know Josh Barbie? Oh I thought you
27:55
Speaker 1: meant you owned one. No, no, no, there's a yeah,
27:57
Speaker 1: there's a podcaster Barbie. Yeah. Um. So they they contracted
28:00
Speaker 1: with Nibisco and they came out with an Oreo theme
28:02
Speaker 1: Barbie and all was fine. They got a few complaints
28:05
Speaker 1: saying like this promotes junk food, but nothing big, no,
28:08
Speaker 1: big East, the usual stuff. And then they released a
28:11
Speaker 1: black version of Oreo Barbie. Yes, and that costs some
28:16
Speaker 1: controversy because, like you said, apparently their boardroom is in
28:20
Speaker 1: a vacuum and they did not realize that, Uh, that
28:23
Speaker 1: is a racial epithet, uh level leveled by black people
28:28
Speaker 1: against other black people who they feel like are being
28:30
Speaker 1: too quote unquote white. So there dark on the outside,
28:34
Speaker 1: white in the middle Oreos and Mattel wasn't aware of this.
28:38
Speaker 1: And they released an African American Barbie that said Oreo
28:42
Speaker 1: all over on the shirt and like in the purse,
28:45
Speaker 1: and uh, they are now a collector's item, of course,
28:48
Speaker 1: because they quickly were yanked from the shelves and his
28:51
Speaker 1: cracked dot com put it. They quote picked the one
28:54
Speaker 1: cookie in the universe that could ever be considered as offensive. Ever,
28:59
Speaker 1: the one cookie she could have been the Nutter Butter
29:01
Speaker 1: barbie problem. Yeah, you're right, or corrects right? Um so
29:06
Speaker 1: Mattel Also as there's a lot of stuff that they do, right,
29:10
Speaker 1: Like in that case, they didn't mean to offend anybody.
29:12
Speaker 1: It was just a horrible mistake. Um. And you know,
29:16
Speaker 1: they released an African American barbie and they released a
29:19
Speaker 1: white barbie. Right. Um. They do the same with with
29:22
Speaker 1: multi ethnic barbies from around the world. They've been releasing
29:25
Speaker 1: them forever. And like it's great because you know, oh,
29:28
Speaker 1: there's a place called Spain. A little girl says, like
29:32
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It's good for that. But at
29:33
Speaker 1: the same time, it's like the clothes they dressed them
29:37
Speaker 1: up in are beyond stereotypical. Like Native American barbie, the
29:42
Speaker 1: Dutch barbie looks like the Swiss miss Girl. Um. As
29:45
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, it probably is. Um. And then
29:48
Speaker 1: Vitan Ken from Mexico in nine four. He's wearing a sombrero.
29:54
Speaker 1: It's just agonizing. Sometimes they're trying to just miss the
29:58
Speaker 1: mark once in a while. Yeah, I get the feeling
30:00
Speaker 1: that the boardroom is not only in a vacuum, but
30:02
Speaker 1: it's a lot of like old white people making these decisions.
30:08
Speaker 1: Um okay. So I would say probably the most controversial
30:12
Speaker 1: aspect of Barbie always from the outset, before she was
30:16
Speaker 1: even created, because her body. Yeah, that's what kept her
30:19
Speaker 1: from being created in the first place. As we mentioned,
30:21
Speaker 1: the uh Mattel CEO said, you can't release at all
30:25
Speaker 1: with big breast. I'm glad you finally got that out.
30:30
Speaker 1: Just like didn't even know how to say that, but
30:32
Speaker 1: that's what they said. And since then, Barbie's figure has
30:35
Speaker 1: been notoriously called out is unsupportable, fake, um, not realistic,
30:42
Speaker 1: and at worst, like really bad for these little girls
30:47
Speaker 1: in their body image and what they think they're supposed
30:49
Speaker 1: to look like, like a tool of body dysmorphic disorder. Basically,
30:53
Speaker 1: it's like it's not even possible to look that way,
30:55
Speaker 1: they say it depending okay. So what's very interesting, I think, Chuck,
30:59
Speaker 1: is that this design of her body was actually a
31:04
Speaker 1: design decision made by her designers, who were all women,
31:08
Speaker 1: career women's successful career women um to allow her to
31:12
Speaker 1: wear miniature versions of real like fashion clothes, so like
31:16
Speaker 1: her crazy hips and small waist, they were designed like
31:20
Speaker 1: that so that she could she could wear these clothes
31:22
Speaker 1: that gathered at the waist and she had breasts, so
31:26
Speaker 1: she could wear these biouses or whatever that we're like
31:28
Speaker 1: based on real clothes and designed by real designers. So
31:31
Speaker 1: it's actually a design decision, but it quickly took on
31:34
Speaker 1: its life that like, yeah, Barbies, this evil tool that
31:38
Speaker 1: spreads this um unhealthy body image to little girls. Yeah.
31:42
Speaker 1: I think it was the nine fifties and it was
31:44
Speaker 1: just like, you know, let's make a full figure and
31:47
Speaker 1: you know, a tiny waist and girls will love it
31:50
Speaker 1: or she looks like us? Yeah what what? This is
31:54
Speaker 1: just my personal opinion here. That's all well and good.
31:58
Speaker 1: Since then, may be, since they've taken all these steps
32:01
Speaker 1: to introduce more correct versions, maybe they should release a
32:05
Speaker 1: like realistic Barbie dump Be Barbie, a k. A normal
32:10
Speaker 1: looking person Barbie. I don't think it will ever happen.
32:12
Speaker 1: I don't think they have made changes to her figure,
32:16
Speaker 1: so she's nothing like she was when she first came out.
32:19
Speaker 1: She's not like she was. She she has changed some,
32:22
Speaker 1: but for the most part there there's not gonna be
32:25
Speaker 1: a dumpy Barbie, not if you call it that. See,
32:29
Speaker 1: that's part of the problem is looking average you called dumpy.
32:32
Speaker 1: Oh come on, man, I am definitely not part of
32:35
Speaker 1: the problem. I don't. I wouldn't call it a normal
32:38
Speaker 1: looking person dumpy Barbie. Then compared to Barbie, you would
32:41
Speaker 1: call her dumpy Barbie. I think that's definitely that's the
32:44
Speaker 1: whole zeitgeist behind this whole thing. Like if if Barbie
32:48
Speaker 1: is perfect than anything else, that's different as dumpy. Alright,
32:53
Speaker 1: well I disagree, Um well, National Organization of Women would
32:57
Speaker 1: probably disagree to. They've frequently saw. Did Barbie is a
33:01
Speaker 1: again this instrument of delivering an unhealthy body image to
33:06
Speaker 1: little girls? Yeah? And like you said, they sometimes they
33:09
Speaker 1: don't make it any easier on themselves because in the
33:12
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three Barbie sit upset, there was a pamphlet
33:16
Speaker 1: called how to Lose Weight, and one of the tips
33:18
Speaker 1: Barbie says, don't eat and that's it. So they Two
33:26
Speaker 1: years later there was another booklet, Barbie Slumber Party, that
33:29
Speaker 1: said there was a bathroom scale that was permanently set
33:31
Speaker 1: at a hundred and ten pounds, and that sounds like
33:34
Speaker 1: that's a little weird. The same booklet was included, Yeah,
33:36
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's weird. And even if it's not weird,
33:39
Speaker 1: and again like if you take this, the conventional idea
33:42
Speaker 1: of what's going with the thought is behind this um
33:46
Speaker 1: you they said, okay, well what is Barbie? Wait? Barbie
33:50
Speaker 1: is well, we can't make a real um scale that
33:53
Speaker 1: moves back and forth, so we're gonna set it at
33:56
Speaker 1: one ten without any thought that possibly this little girl
33:59
Speaker 1: is gonna think that if she doesn't weigh a hundred
34:01
Speaker 1: and ten, like, she's not as pretty as Barbie. Yes,
34:04
Speaker 1: it never will be, and it will always hate herself
34:06
Speaker 1: for not weighing a hundred and ten pounds. It's just
34:09
Speaker 1: these decisions made without this wider thought has kind of
34:13
Speaker 1: give him a Telli's reputation. That's right. They've done studies
34:17
Speaker 1: on this. They did one in two thousand eleven in Holland,
34:20
Speaker 1: and they said that girls who played with average sized
34:22
Speaker 1: dollars for ten minutes eight significantly more during a taste
34:26
Speaker 1: test following play than girls who played with the Barbie
34:28
Speaker 1: dolls or a thin doll like Barbie. Yeah, to be fair,
34:33
Speaker 1: And another study which I thought was pretty interesting. Well,
34:37
Speaker 1: obviously they found that promotes materialism and sexualizes play. But um,
34:42
Speaker 1: this other study found that there's more torture play and
34:45
Speaker 1: anger play involved with Barbie, Like a little girl will
34:47
Speaker 1: rip off Barbie's arms or head, and they found that
34:51
Speaker 1: they ripped off more Barbie parts than other dolls because,
34:55
Speaker 1: as one girl said, quote, she's the only one that
34:57
Speaker 1: looks perfect. Right. So this is huge, huge, massive body
35:02
Speaker 1: of work on the effect that Barbie's body has on
35:06
Speaker 1: the little girls that play with there, and more often
35:08
Speaker 1: than not, they find that it creates a poor self
35:14
Speaker 1: image body image in little girls. But interestingly, it tends
35:18
Speaker 1: to disappear in tweens. Yeah, like, um, say they're studying
35:22
Speaker 1: girls three to ten, it'll really appear in like three, four, five, six,
35:26
Speaker 1: But then like like it doesn't appear as much. It's
35:30
Speaker 1: not as prevalent. Interesting, Yeah, it is, but you you wonder, like,
35:34
Speaker 1: what's the lasting effect of those when it hits those three, four,
35:38
Speaker 1: five and six year old you know, yeah, that's true
35:40
Speaker 1: formative years. Um. There's also been a lot of studies
35:43
Speaker 1: and reports of what Barbie would look like worsh a
35:46
Speaker 1: real person, right, Yeah, they're always disturbing. So you said that, like,
35:49
Speaker 1: it's impossible look like Barbie. Not entirely, but close. South
35:54
Speaker 1: Australia University researchers calculated that a woman's chance of natural
36:00
Speaker 1: really having Barbie's figure was one in a hundred thousand.
36:03
Speaker 1: I'm surprised it's not more than that. I am too,
36:06
Speaker 1: But for a man to have Ken's figure, you have
36:08
Speaker 1: like a one in fifty chance. You and I are
36:11
Speaker 1: are we don't have good chances. Uh. And in Finland
36:17
Speaker 1: at their University Central Hospital, they say Barbie were life size,
36:21
Speaker 1: she would lack the seventeen to two percent body fat
36:25
Speaker 1: required for a woman to menstrate, so she's so thin
36:28
Speaker 1: she medically can't even menstrate. And the BBC did this
36:35
Speaker 1: comparison of Barbie and one of their employees named Libby,
36:39
Speaker 1: and if Libby were to keep her twenty eight inch
36:42
Speaker 1: waist but stay in step with Barbie's other proportions, she
36:45
Speaker 1: would have to be seven ft six inches tall, which
36:48
Speaker 1: again isn't impossible. The world's tallest woman is Yeow Defend,
36:51
Speaker 1: who's seven ft eight inches tall. Yeah, but she didn't
36:54
Speaker 1: look like Barbie. Uh, and then if she kept her height,
36:57
Speaker 1: if Libby kept her hype but shrank Barbie's proportioned waist,
37:02
Speaker 1: she would have a twenty inch waist, which is three
37:04
Speaker 1: inches smaller in circumference than um Victoria Beckham's waist. Who's
37:11
Speaker 1: like a bean pole beyond the beam posts. She's gotta
37:14
Speaker 1: be like one of the She's like Vampira waistwise, she's thin. Um.
37:20
Speaker 1: And did you see this Ukrainian woman? She says she
37:24
Speaker 1: hasn't had plastic surgery. She's not being truthful. Valeria Valeria
37:29
Speaker 1: Um Lucan Lucia Nova. Yeah, the quote unquote real life
37:33
Speaker 1: Barbie doll. She's a model, artist and singer supposedly, and uh,
37:38
Speaker 1: just look up a picture of her and prepare to
37:39
Speaker 1: get creeped out. She's very animate. Have you seen her friend,
37:42
Speaker 1: that's like the real life anime girl. Yeah, she photoshop
37:46
Speaker 1: se she denies it, but I saw untouched before pictures
37:50
Speaker 1: and she's clearly had plastic surgery and she doctors her photos.
37:53
Speaker 1: But um, it's creepy. She looks like a doll. She
37:57
Speaker 1: doesn't look real, she doesn't look alive. She's in the
37:59
Speaker 1: young Annie Valley. But she's a real person. Yeah. Um,
38:03
Speaker 1: there's a woman named Cindy Jackson who's a brit who
38:07
Speaker 1: actually holds the record for um most plastic surgeries in
38:11
Speaker 1: a lifetime fifty two as of April two eleven. And
38:14
Speaker 1: she started undergoing those at age one after deciding that
38:18
Speaker 1: she wanted to look like Barbie back when she was six.
38:21
Speaker 1: So she moved to London and started going under the knife.
38:23
Speaker 1: I didn't see a picture of her to you. Oh yeah,
38:26
Speaker 1: well she looks like she looks Barbie. Yeah. So we
38:29
Speaker 1: mentioned the litigious nature of Mattel guarding zealous league guarding
38:33
Speaker 1: Barbie's image over the years. Uh, and you have dug
38:38
Speaker 1: up via the Bathroom Reader and notable examples. Um number one.
38:43
Speaker 1: Paul Hanson in the n H San Francisco artists began
38:47
Speaker 1: selling Barbie art basically drag Queen Barbie, Tanya Harding Barbie,
38:52
Speaker 1: Exorcist Barbie having a lot of fun with it, Tanya
38:55
Speaker 1: Hardening Barbie. I guess it comes with a little minicro
38:58
Speaker 1: bar there's dumpy Barbie right there. Oh boy. Um. He
39:03
Speaker 1: sold about a hundred and fifty dollars, earned about two grand,
39:06
Speaker 1: and Mattel sued him for one point two billion dollars.
39:10
Speaker 1: This is what these corporations can do. They'll just be like,
39:13
Speaker 1: I didn't gonna sue you for nine dollars. So Hansen
39:18
Speaker 1: is like, alright, alright, alright, everybody just calmed down. How
39:21
Speaker 1: about this. I will sell my dolls only in art galleries,
39:24
Speaker 1: no more stores, just the galleries themselves, and I will
39:29
Speaker 1: donate all of the profits charity. Mattel said, no, We're
39:32
Speaker 1: going to court. Pal. So they went to court, and
39:35
Speaker 1: eventually a judge, uh just lost patients, it said, and
39:39
Speaker 1: granted a partial judgment and said against Mattel for not
39:43
Speaker 1: having a sense of humor. So a little smack on
39:46
Speaker 1: the face, but I'm sure the attorneys smugly left with
39:49
Speaker 1: their headheld high. Um. And that's kind of similar to
39:53
Speaker 1: another artist's case, Mark Napier, who's uh from New York.
39:58
Speaker 1: He's got us a website. UM that was originally called
40:01
Speaker 1: the Distorted Barbie website. UM, and it was pictures of
40:04
Speaker 1: Kate Moss, Barbie Fat and ugly Barbie Dolly parton Barbie. UM,
40:08
Speaker 1: and Mattel sent a ceason desist later apparently they were
40:11
Speaker 1: a fan of this guy or something. UM. Imagine that
40:14
Speaker 1: people trolling the world for this kind of stuff, you know.
40:17
Speaker 1: I mean they sent a ceason assist rather than suing
40:19
Speaker 1: him for a billion dollars in days, instead of just
40:21
Speaker 1: suing him. But Napier said, you know what, I'm not
40:24
Speaker 1: going to really do this, h percent. I'm gonna blur
40:26
Speaker 1: the images a little bit and then change the B
40:28
Speaker 1: and Barbie to a dollar sign. I wonder if it's
40:32
Speaker 1: still up. I haven't looked. I haven't looked either. And
40:34
Speaker 1: then there's Barbie. Barbie Bell a k. Barbara Bell. Yeah,
40:39
Speaker 1: this one is a little she's at wacky. She claimed
40:41
Speaker 1: that Barbie was speaking to her. Is that right? And
40:44
Speaker 1: and started selling uh chances to channel Barbie spirit and
40:49
Speaker 1: answer personal questions via Barbie for three bucks three bucks
40:52
Speaker 1: a pop. Barbie will directly through me tell you whatever
40:57
Speaker 1: you want to know. Well, and um, Barbie sent her
41:00
Speaker 1: first message to Barbara Bell. The message was I need respect.
41:05
Speaker 1: So Bell also, this is probably what pushed her over
41:09
Speaker 1: the edge as far as Mattel is concerned. She started
41:11
Speaker 1: publishing the Barbie Channeling newsletter. So I'm Antell threatened a
41:14
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar lawsuit. Bell is like, okay, fine, that's fine.
41:19
Speaker 1: I'll shut down, but first I'm gonna make a statement. Look,
41:22
Speaker 1: she says, for three dollars, nobody's getting hurt. I don't
41:25
Speaker 1: claim to be the only voice of Barbie. And I'm
41:27
Speaker 1: sure not taking any other channeler's business. I've carved out
41:30
Speaker 1: my own niche in the market. There's seven million Barbie
41:33
Speaker 1: dolls in the world with no voice my favorite partist.
41:37
Speaker 1: I'm sure not taking any other channeler's business. Nobody else
41:41
Speaker 1: would be this crazy, is what she's saying. Um, this
41:45
Speaker 1: one turned out a little odd if you ask me. Um.
41:49
Speaker 1: There's a band called Aqua from Denmark. They recorded a
41:51
Speaker 1: song called Barbie Girl. You know this song? Right? Oh?
41:54
Speaker 1: Here it is now do you recognize it? Yes, you do.
42:12
Speaker 1: I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world. Is plastic.
42:15
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. Yeah. I don't know you. I don't believe you.
42:18
Speaker 1: I don't think you realize that I don't listen to radio.
42:21
Speaker 1: I don't believe that you've not heard this song. I haven't,
42:23
Speaker 1: all right, So Mattel filed suit, of course against m
42:25
Speaker 1: c A. So this is actually slugging it out with
42:28
Speaker 1: a big corporation for a change. Uh, And it ended
42:32
Speaker 1: up as a bigger battle because of that, I'm sure,
42:35
Speaker 1: because they can all afford big, high powered attorneys. So
42:38
Speaker 1: they suited Mattel. I'm sorry, m c A, m c
42:41
Speaker 1: A countered um and you know what, we're suing you,
42:44
Speaker 1: and we can even bring in expert witnesses that basically
42:48
Speaker 1: we'll testify that you based this on a little German
42:51
Speaker 1: sex doll, sex doll, but you know, sexy doll back
42:55
Speaker 1: in the day, in the nineteen fifties, And Mattel was
42:59
Speaker 1: probably like, oh, yeah, we did kind of do that.
43:02
Speaker 1: They had a really good point. They said, what Aqua
43:04
Speaker 1: was doing in the song Barbie Girl is not to
43:07
Speaker 1: make Barbie into a sex object, as Mattel alleged, but
43:10
Speaker 1: to point out that she's been one all along. Yeah,
43:12
Speaker 1: and then Mattella exactly and so um. In a in
43:17
Speaker 1: an ironic twist of fate, um, they ruled this song
43:20
Speaker 1: was protected as parody and tossed out the defamation suit
43:23
Speaker 1: back at Mattel. And then in two thousand nine, Barbie
43:26
Speaker 1: actually recorded a cover version of the song and Mattel
43:29
Speaker 1: released on YouTube to promote a line of Barbie fashionistas
43:34
Speaker 1: that crazy. So they sued them for the song and
43:36
Speaker 1: then they used the song I'm Sure for free because
43:39
Speaker 1: it was a cover version sung by whoever does the
43:41
Speaker 1: Barbie songs. This one's my favorite, Paul David. I just
43:45
Speaker 1: felt bad for this guy. He Um. He was a
43:47
Speaker 1: Barbie collector, a big time Barbie collector. He was on
43:50
Speaker 1: their team. Yeah, so much so that he published the
43:52
Speaker 1: Barbie catalog um and he in the mid ninety nineties.
43:57
Speaker 1: Um wrote in one of his catalogs that if there
43:59
Speaker 1: were an ugly con test, Elizabeth and Queen Barbie would
44:01
Speaker 1: definitely win. Did you see that one? Yeah, it's Elizabeth
44:05
Speaker 1: the First. You know, it was notoriously dumpy. Yeah, it
44:09
Speaker 1: was just, uh, it looked like Queen Elizabeth the First.
44:14
Speaker 1: But this guy, who they had trusted to help protect
44:18
Speaker 1: Barbie's image had written something snyde, so they brought down
44:23
Speaker 1: the hammer of God on him. Also, they point out
44:25
Speaker 1: that there were some he didn't put the registered trademark
44:28
Speaker 1: symbol next to some of the photos, which is like,
44:31
Speaker 1: if you want to give motel after you uh just
44:34
Speaker 1: put forget to put the registered trademark next to a
44:38
Speaker 1: photo of Barbie. Yeah, we should put that on our
44:40
Speaker 1: podcast title. We don't want the Barbie hammer, we don't
44:44
Speaker 1: um so Barbie sus mattel Um accuses him of copyright
44:48
Speaker 1: infringement and um. Eventually Paul David signed a settlement agreement,
44:54
Speaker 1: and as The Wall Street Journal reported, it stipulated that
44:57
Speaker 1: Barbie may only be portrayed in his catalog as wholesome, friendly,
45:01
Speaker 1: accessible and kind, caring and protective, cheerful, fun loving, talented
45:06
Speaker 1: and independent. And what did he do? He was disgusted
45:11
Speaker 1: and sold all his Barbies and I guess quit writing
45:13
Speaker 1: his catalog and that was the end of that one,
45:15
Speaker 1: Which is that's why that was so sad to me,
45:16
Speaker 1: because he was such a huge supporter of the company,
45:19
Speaker 1: like to be such a fan to go out of
45:21
Speaker 1: your way to publish a catalog and then they essentially
45:24
Speaker 1: just like squash the guy. Yeah. I remember reading this
45:27
Speaker 1: and like many years ago and thinking like, yeah, that
45:31
Speaker 1: was pretty awful. Yeah, but who knows, Maybe it's the
45:36
Speaker 1: turning point for the guy. Maybe he's like, I'm free.
45:39
Speaker 1: He walked outside and like talked to real humans. Uh
45:43
Speaker 1: what about Barbie being banned, Chuck? Yeah, like this year actually,
45:48
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve, she was banned in Iran for
45:51
Speaker 1: destructive cultural and social consequences, and they came up with
45:54
Speaker 1: their own little doll, and girls called it ugly and fat.
46:00
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a picture of this one. I couldn't
46:03
Speaker 1: find anywhere. It doesn't like anything like Barbie. It's just
46:05
Speaker 1: a doll. Yeah, oh then maybe I did see it. Um. Yeah,
46:09
Speaker 1: the one toy seller called Barbie worse than an American missile.
46:13
Speaker 1: But I also hear that all over Tehran, like you
46:15
Speaker 1: can still get Barbie's no problem under the counter, but
46:18
Speaker 1: for like, this is what I what I hear got
46:23
Speaker 1: you this Audi Arabia band Barbie in two thousand three,
46:26
Speaker 1: saying she was offensive to Islam and even in the
46:29
Speaker 1: States she can't get no respect. West Virginia outlaw Barbie
46:33
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, or try to with a bill
46:36
Speaker 1: deciding emotional intellectual impact she has on girls. But I
46:40
Speaker 1: doubt it that one anywhere did. It's time now. Yeah,
46:44
Speaker 1: we're about to talk to Gordon Jovna, the founder of
46:47
Speaker 1: the Bathroom Reader's Institute, the guy who introduced me to
46:51
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and we're gonna talk to him. What
46:53
Speaker 1: about the missteps of Barbie some even more missteps. Yeah,
46:56
Speaker 1: it tells got a great and wonderful history of it.
46:59
Speaker 1: So let's let's bring them up. So, Chuck, we're sitting
47:06
Speaker 1: here talking to the guy Gordon Jobna, the founder of
47:11
Speaker 1: the Bathroom Readers Institute and publisher of the Uncle John's
47:14
Speaker 1: Bathroom Reader series. His name's on Uncle John. No, it's Gordon.
47:18
Speaker 1: He We tried to call him Mr job Nat and
47:20
Speaker 1: he went crazy. We're great, we're fantastic, Thank you very
47:28
Speaker 1: much for joining us. We're um talking about Barbie. UM.
47:32
Speaker 1: And of course you know, we've let everybody know all
47:34
Speaker 1: the material from the episode today. This is a special
47:38
Speaker 1: one because normally we do this from how stuff works articles,
47:40
Speaker 1: but we're doing this, um from just stuff that's come
47:45
Speaker 1: out of the Bathroom Readers. UM. So so we're talking
47:48
Speaker 1: Barbie here. I feel like, UM, we've kind of done
47:51
Speaker 1: a pretty good job setting all this up. We've we've
47:53
Speaker 1: gone um into Barbie and Mattel's UM, I guess, troubled
47:59
Speaker 1: history a lot. We've kind of made it clear that
48:02
Speaker 1: Mattel is pretty good at making missteps, and um, you've
48:07
Speaker 1: you've brought along some some other examples of ways Mattel
48:10
Speaker 1: has just missed the mark a little bit. I guess
48:12
Speaker 1: you could say, with some of their their Barbie's Barbie releases. Right, yeah,
48:16
Speaker 1: we we have some examples of Barbies that created controversy.
48:21
Speaker 1: I don't know that you'd call them all missteps. At
48:25
Speaker 1: least one of them. It's not a misstep, but certainly
48:28
Speaker 1: certainly a controversial. Uh So the first one I would
48:34
Speaker 1: mention is share a smile, Becky, which he'll introduced in
48:42
Speaker 1: Yeah we laughed, then then feel bad for laughing. No,
48:46
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. They were actually originally going to
48:48
Speaker 1: call it wheelchair Barbie. Excuse me, wheelchair Becky, but they
48:52
Speaker 1: were they had an eye toward diversity. And this was
48:55
Speaker 1: a friend of Barbies who was um confined to a
48:59
Speaker 1: wheelchair for an unspecified disability. And incidentally, the wheelchair the
49:05
Speaker 1: doll came with a wheelchair, little pink wheelchair, And that
49:09
Speaker 1: was fine until um Mattel got a complaint from a
49:15
Speaker 1: seventeen year old girl from Washington named Kirsty Johnson. She
49:21
Speaker 1: complained that Barbie's dream House was not wheelchair accessible, but
49:26
Speaker 1: she had a personal interest because she was she had
49:29
Speaker 1: superbral palsy and was confined to a wheelchair herself. So then,
49:35
Speaker 1: uh She also mentioned that the dream house. Although the
49:38
Speaker 1: dream House had an elevator, was too to accommodate the wheelchair.
49:43
Speaker 1: So this thing falls into another example we pointed out
49:45
Speaker 1: earlier in the podcast. I believe that um Mattel probably
49:50
Speaker 1: trying to do the right thing here, but in the
49:52
Speaker 1: end sort of takes a ham pisted approach and doesn't
49:55
Speaker 1: cover all the angles. Yeah, and and there was my
50:00
Speaker 1: was to promise a redesign of the dream House, but
50:03
Speaker 1: instead they just dropped Becky from the Barbie line. Very
50:08
Speaker 1: set sat into that story. That is all met tell
50:11
Speaker 1: right there? What what else do you have for um?
50:13
Speaker 1: I know, totally styling Barbie kind of raised some some eyebrows.
50:18
Speaker 1: I believe it did. Uh. And this is the one
50:22
Speaker 1: that I don't know if you'd call it a misstep,
50:24
Speaker 1: but it certainly caused a scandal. They released this one
50:26
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. I had a set of
50:29
Speaker 1: stickers that came with it that looked were like temporary tattoos.
50:32
Speaker 1: They had two sets, actually, one for the doll and
50:35
Speaker 1: that an example of that would be the heart with
50:38
Speaker 1: Ken that they've been in Ken and and they also
50:42
Speaker 1: came with a set of temporary tattoos for the girls
50:45
Speaker 1: who played with the dolls to put on themselves. Uh.
50:49
Speaker 1: And they were also impact on the package. They encouraged
50:52
Speaker 1: girls to to put them their lower back, which is
50:56
Speaker 1: what those of us, well well most people know as
51:00
Speaker 1: a tramp stand. Uh. So parents were up in arms
51:05
Speaker 1: because it did two things. It encouraged girls, uh to
51:11
Speaker 1: give each other homemade tattoos, they said, And they also
51:13
Speaker 1: said they took it was a message that it was
51:15
Speaker 1: okay for girls to do to do trampy things. And
51:18
Speaker 1: this is one of those things. I wouldn't I don't
51:20
Speaker 1: know that I would call us a misstep because they
51:24
Speaker 1: Mattel didn't agree and they left it in the in
51:26
Speaker 1: the line and it's still available. Yeah, yeah, I guess
51:28
Speaker 1: that would be kind of the definition of a misstep.
51:30
Speaker 1: If Mattel doesn't back down, then it's not a misstep. Well,
51:34
Speaker 1: which basically means does the doll cell exactly. It's a
51:38
Speaker 1: misstep if it doesn't sell breath. And can't you see
51:41
Speaker 1: little girls sitting around like, oh, we're out of our
51:43
Speaker 1: barbie temporary tattoos. Go get a sewing needle in some India, inc.
51:47
Speaker 1: Let's get let's get down to brass techs here um
51:50
Speaker 1: and we talked Gordon about Skipper already. Um. We talked
51:54
Speaker 1: a little bit about Barbies Family Circle, um, and we
51:58
Speaker 1: we mentioned Skipper, but we didn't mention the controversy that
52:01
Speaker 1: came with her, like right out of the gate, right
52:03
Speaker 1: when she was released kind of early on in the
52:06
Speaker 1: Barbie saga in ninety right. Yeah, Yeah, Skipper was Barbie's
52:12
Speaker 1: little sister, and she was introduced actually in the sixties,
52:16
Speaker 1: but the original plan was for them to uh make
52:19
Speaker 1: her a little older with each subsequent release. In the
52:23
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five they introduced growing up Skipper, which was
52:27
Speaker 1: controversial almost from the very beginning because what it was
52:33
Speaker 1: was when when girls cranked her arm, she grew a
52:37
Speaker 1: quarter of an inch taller, and she sprouted breasts, and
52:42
Speaker 1: she got an hour glass figure and a tramp stand.
52:47
Speaker 1: You have to put that one on yourself. Yeah, I
52:48
Speaker 1: would be curious to see just the mechanism behind this.
52:51
Speaker 1: I'd like to, I guess something. I'd like to play
52:53
Speaker 1: with one, but I would like to see how that worked.
52:56
Speaker 1: I wanted to see the doll grow. I'm interested that
52:59
Speaker 1: the safe complicated. If you want to play with it,
53:01
Speaker 1: you'd have to buy one, like on eBay and it
53:03
Speaker 1: would cost you around a hundred bucks. That's not worth
53:05
Speaker 1: it that there are YouTube videos of of the doll
53:11
Speaker 1: in action. Perfect you go, chuck, what the link to
53:14
Speaker 1: one of those? After this thing publishes? Um? Yeah, but
53:18
Speaker 1: again this isn't a misstep because as I understand it,
53:21
Speaker 1: Mattel was like, well, we'll see you all in hell
53:24
Speaker 1: because we're not taking this one off the shelves because
53:26
Speaker 1: again it's selling very well. That's that's correct. But they
53:29
Speaker 1: did phase it out. Uh. In seventy nine, they introduced
53:36
Speaker 1: super teen Skipper, which was a the breast didn't grow,
53:39
Speaker 1: but they were a little larger than the previous Skipper.
53:42
Speaker 1: And then a couple of years after that, they they
53:45
Speaker 1: made her a little bit, uh, took away a little
53:49
Speaker 1: baby fat, and and they she became hot Stuff Skipper. No,
53:53
Speaker 1: was that really what they called her? Yeah? Hot stuff Skipper. Wow. Um, So, Gordon,
53:59
Speaker 1: you and your rather started out before the Bathroom Reader. Um,
54:02
Speaker 1: you guys wrote a book about the sixties and the eighties,
54:05
Speaker 1: and you guys mentioned Barbie in that book, right, So
54:09
Speaker 1: what did you guys say? We said it was a
54:11
Speaker 1: pop culture book, very early pop culture book about the sixties.
54:14
Speaker 1: And and um we said in the introduction that Barbie
54:18
Speaker 1: was as important a cultural icon as any anything that
54:24
Speaker 1: happened in the nineteen sixties. And we were lamb based
54:27
Speaker 1: in the or Lamb bastard whatever in the in the press,
54:31
Speaker 1: in reviews for you know, like somehow putting Barbie over
54:35
Speaker 1: the war in Vietnam or civil rights right there, And
54:37
Speaker 1: we weren't. But we just felt that that this was
54:39
Speaker 1: going to be a lasting, uh cultural image and we
54:44
Speaker 1: were a little ahead on that. Laughing now exactly. Well,
54:47
Speaker 1: let's talk about your books. Um, you guys are releasing
54:50
Speaker 1: the twenty five anniversary of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. Cong congratulations.
54:54
Speaker 1: That's enormous. Um, so what what what tell us a
54:58
Speaker 1: little bit about this? Well, um, you know, we never
55:02
Speaker 1: thought we would be doing this for twenty five years.
55:04
Speaker 1: And I should say that the actual inspiration for doing
55:07
Speaker 1: the Bathroom Meador was my brother's idea to give credit
55:11
Speaker 1: where credit is due. But um, you know that first
55:14
Speaker 1: book was two pages long, and we are our latest one,
55:20
Speaker 1: Uncle John's Fully Loaded Bathroom Reader. We uh we made
55:22
Speaker 1: it six hundred and eight pages, so it's a it's
55:26
Speaker 1: quite a giant book that covers a zillion topics and
55:29
Speaker 1: just like any other bathroomador, only a little more so. So, um,
55:33
Speaker 1: where can everybody find the anniversary Well, all of your
55:37
Speaker 1: books where where? Where's the best place to find them? Well,
55:40
Speaker 1: hopefully your local bookstore will have Uncle John's fully loaded
55:43
Speaker 1: Bathroom Reader. Certainly the chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble
55:47
Speaker 1: will have it. Um, you can get it at Costco,
55:50
Speaker 1: Sam's Club, get it online from Amazon, or you can
55:53
Speaker 1: get it online from US at bathroom reader dot com. Cool.
55:58
Speaker 1: We'd love to have people visit us. Uh and sometimes
56:01
Speaker 1: they make suggestions of what we should be including, and
56:04
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. Hey, thank you very much for joining us. Um,
56:07
Speaker 1: you guys are doing the anniversary edition of Uncle John's
56:11
Speaker 1: Bathroom Reader. It's available pretty much anywhere you can find
56:13
Speaker 1: a book, right. Absolutely. I will be looking forward to
56:16
Speaker 1: reading it this Christmas. So thank you very much, Gordon
56:19
Speaker 1: job Now we appreciate you. Thank you, Josh, and thank
56:22
Speaker 1: you Chuck. Thanks god bye, Well Josh. That was awesome.
56:29
Speaker 1: Thanks for hooking that up man. Sorry I was a
56:31
Speaker 1: fanboy kinda No, it was great. Uh, Like whenever you
56:35
Speaker 1: can get the real people on the line, and sometimes
56:38
Speaker 1: it happens, you just gotta do it. I'm just glad,
56:41
Speaker 1: he answered. I mean like we were really running a
56:43
Speaker 1: gamble by calling him in the middle of recording. That's true. Alright,
56:47
Speaker 1: So shall we finish up with a few of them,
56:48
Speaker 1: the more odd Barbie dollas throughout the street. These aren't missteps,
56:51
Speaker 1: are just unusual. Yeah, and I'm sure there was not
56:56
Speaker 1: a marketing campaign behind any of them. There's side to
56:58
Speaker 1: Another Country or come there is Alfred Hitchcock's the Bird's
57:02
Speaker 1: Barbie and this Barbie looked like Tippy Headron from the movie,
57:06
Speaker 1: and it has three blackbirds attached to her, so they're
57:10
Speaker 1: like perpetually attacking her. Yeah, she's being attacked by blackbird Barbie. Uh.
57:16
Speaker 1: My favorite is Pooper Scooper Barbie. And I guess this
57:19
Speaker 1: is to teach girls, or I guess boys they play
57:22
Speaker 1: with dolls. We've been seeing girls the whole time. Um.
57:25
Speaker 1: It comes a little Golden Retriever named Tanner who eats
57:28
Speaker 1: and poops and really poops. And Barbie has a little
57:32
Speaker 1: shovel and pale to be a responsible dog owner and
57:34
Speaker 1: curb her dog. That's what you can inspire to do.
57:38
Speaker 1: That's right, Um, there's the McDonald's one, which we talked about.
57:41
Speaker 1: She's wearing a headset which I think threw you off.
57:43
Speaker 1: But can a franchise the work at his or her
57:46
Speaker 1: own store? Yes, taken to me. The most bizarre one
57:53
Speaker 1: of all time is I Love Lucy sa Barbie. Oh yeah,
57:59
Speaker 1: I thought again, say George Washington Barbie. It's pretty bizarre, alright.
58:03
Speaker 1: So what's I Love Lucy One? That I Love Lucy
58:05
Speaker 1: Santa Barbie is based on a specific episode of I
58:08
Speaker 1: Love Lucy from nineteen fifty six, and Barbie is dressed
58:11
Speaker 1: as Ethel Mertz, who is dressed as Santa Claus. That's
58:15
Speaker 1: the weirdest Barbie ever. She's not dressed as Santa. She's
58:19
Speaker 1: dressed as Ethel from I Love Lucy dressed to Santa.
58:22
Speaker 1: My like, my mind is mush. Yeah. I think some
58:24
Speaker 1: Mattel like employee higher up was like hammered on eggnog
58:29
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve watching this George Washington's episode and said, uh,
58:33
Speaker 1: I got a great idea, and I guess George Washington
58:37
Speaker 1: Barbie followed, actually preceded in and that's pretty much straight up.
58:43
Speaker 1: She is dressed like George Washington in his Revolutionary War uniform.
58:46
Speaker 1: That's right, except that's pink in it. There's an NBA Barbie,
58:50
Speaker 1: which doesn't seem all that weird. You can get all
58:52
Speaker 1: the different teams, right, there's never been a w NBA Barbie.
58:57
Speaker 1: That's the weird part. X Files Barbie. That's a little strange. Yeah.
59:01
Speaker 1: There was a can dressed as uh Ducovny's Fox Molder
59:05
Speaker 1: and of course Barbie dressed in a pant suit as
59:08
Speaker 1: uh Scully Goldie Horn Barbie. I loved that Goldie hawn
59:14
Speaker 1: and laughing. Yeah, that's who it's based on. Yeah, with
59:16
Speaker 1: a bikini and the tattoos. It's just sort of an
59:19
Speaker 1: iconic television figure. Yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do?
59:21
Speaker 1: Wildcats Goldie on that was terrible, yeah, or Ruth Buzzy Barbie,
59:26
Speaker 1: you know, um wowdcats Goldie on overboard Goldie hawnks. There
59:33
Speaker 1: was Harley Davidson. Barbie is a bike or chick from
59:37
Speaker 1: head with head to toe leather. That's right, it's weird. Um.
59:40
Speaker 1: And then there's a bunch of other just slightly noteworthy ones.
59:43
Speaker 1: French Made Barbie, Lady of the Unicorns, Barbie, civil Ward,
59:48
Speaker 1: Nurse Barbie, John Dear Barbie urbane. Yeah. I looked up
59:54
Speaker 1: urban Hipster Barbie, and I thought it was gonna be
59:56
Speaker 1: like some Brooklyn chick with Hornero glasses, and it was this.
1:00:00
Speaker 1: It looked more like uh, foxy brown, like black exploitation Barbie.
1:00:08
Speaker 1: They called it. That's what they called urban hipster, like
1:00:11
Speaker 1: big Afro, sort of like African American goddess. Wow. Yeah,
1:00:16
Speaker 1: if it was urban hipster today, it would be she
1:00:18
Speaker 1: would have a mustache and glasses, live in Williamsburg. There's
1:00:22
Speaker 1: Star Trek Barbie and Ken Barbie's dresses, Lieutenant hura Um
1:00:28
Speaker 1: Nascar and John Deere Barbie's bowling Champ Barbie. This one,
1:00:33
Speaker 1: this is one of my favorites. Barbie and Ken is
1:00:35
Speaker 1: the monsters. They have so much fun, those two. And
1:00:39
Speaker 1: then of course the Pepsi. Barbie also had the Coca
1:00:42
Speaker 1: Cola Barbie to do battle and the Cola Wars. Because
1:00:46
Speaker 1: if there's one thing Mattell doesn't want to do is
1:00:48
Speaker 1: to offend any segment of the American population. That's it. Man,
1:00:54
Speaker 1: You got anything else? No, I think In Loui of
1:00:56
Speaker 1: Listener Mail, we had the interview and we just want
1:00:59
Speaker 1: to say thanks to get into Uncle John's bathroom. Here. Yes,
1:01:02
Speaker 1: thank you very much for everything all these years. Appreciate
1:01:05
Speaker 1: you guys, and we appreciate you guys too for listening.
1:01:08
Speaker 1: Agreed Um. If you want to get in touch with us,
1:01:11
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Speaker 1: or you can send us an email. Uh to Stuff
1:01:20
Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com for more on this and
1:01:28
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