gift

Local Authors Recommend…

Big thanks to Nicolette Milholin for including me in her Montgomery News article on the books that local authors recommend for avid readers this holiday season! It’s great to be in such good company… Other authors interviewed for this article include Liz Moore, author of Heft, and Daniel Torday, author of The Sensualist, both of which are two books that I thoroughly enjoyed this year. But my biggest recommendation? Check out the article to find out!

The Big Scoop: Mattel Recalls Pooping Barbie Dog

Though Ernestine may not be getting a pony for Christmas, there’s a distinct possibility that she’ll find a pooping dog under the tree this year:

The only problem is that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has reported that a small magnet in Barbie’s pooper scooper could come loose and pose a choking hazard to small children, thus forcing Mattel to recall the doll, her dog, and his magnetic poop.

What’s especially amazing about the recall is that the CPSC estimated that about 683,000 of the play sets were in circulation at the time — which means that someone at Mattel gave the go-ahead on the pooping dog toy and had over half-million of them made. What’s even more amazing is that the CPSC reports three incidents of the magnet coming loose — which means that three people actually bought Barbie’s fake pooping dog.*

Photo courtesy of Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The good news, however, is that the problem has since been rectified. According to the CPSC, the recall only involves “Barbie and Tanner™ play sets — model numbers J9472 and J9560. The toys include a ‘scooper’ accessory with a magnetic end. Recalled scoopers have a visible, silver colored, disc-shaped magnet on the end of the scooper.” Fortunately, the report goes on to explain that “Scoopers with a white material covering the magnet and products manufactured after January 31, 2007 are not recalled.”

One additional thing that’s worth noting, however, is that the CPSC has not said a word about the psychological damage this toy might cause as a result of glamorizing poop scooping. Needless to say, we’ve all heard countless experts tell us that Barbie’s unrealistic proportions have a tendency to give young children odd ideas about what women’s bodies should look like — thus leading to everything from eating disorders to plastic surgery fetishes.

Along similar lines, it’s not hard to imagine a world in the not too distant future where kids everywhere start to stake out dog parks for a chance to scoop some strange dog’s poop. Why? Because they saw Barbie doing it. Is this future we want for America? More to the point, is this the future we want for our kids? I, for one, don’t think so. But I don’t have any better ideas for Ernestine’s Christmas gift, so it’ll just have to do.

* Yes, this post is just an excuse for me to write “poop” a lot.