WTF is up with toys these days?

[flummoxicated]

Bratz Baby Doll This is all kinds of ick.

I spotted this at Target the other day while waiting for my rx refill. Yes, it's a Bratz baby doll. The regular Bratz dolls are weird enough - but what is happening here, is this supposed to be a sexy infant? That is all sorts of wrong.

File this with vyoma 's recent discovery of a dog for a Barbie doll which poops - Barbie comes complete with a pooper scooper!
(Oh yeah, and in the interest of recycling, apparently the dog eats the poop too.)

Comments

[indywind]

Yes, sexualizing infancy is very disturbing.

I don't see what's wrong with the pooping dog. Real dogs do poop (and sometimes eat it; they are scavenging omnivores, after all). Owners of real dogs do need to clean up after them.

Back before marketing and consumerism ruled the world, one important function of play was for little people to experience & practice what they would do as grownups, to begin building skills and identity before the stakes were too high to admit imaginative experimentation & possible error.

I reckon kids are still trying to do this neccessary part of growing up, within the context of the messages they get from culture, media... and their toys.

[flummoxicated.livejournal.com]

I hasn't thought of that, I guess if the pooping dog helps kids learn responsibility - it just seems like a fixation. Something like that. I haven't read a lot of Freud, I wonder what he would say? :)