There are hundreds of weird homemade videos on the Internet that use Barbie dolls to act out bizarre perversions. Over on the official Barbie website, there's one that may just be odder than any of them. It's an ad for the new Barbie "Tanner Dog." I'm a little fuzzy on just what comes in the box when you buy one of these things but basically, it's Barbie's dog and you feed it plastic food…and then at some point (Immediately? A half hour later?) the toy dog takes a dump and you have Barbie clean it up with the Barbie Pooper Scooper, which I hope isn't sold separately.
Yes, yes. I know this sounds like one of those lame parody commercials they used to use to bridge sketches on Saturday Night Live but it's legit. Linking directly to the video on Mattel's site is a little tricky but here goes: This link may, depending on your browser, play it for you. If it doesn't, go to either this page or this page and look for a picture of Barbie and her dog to click on. It's a very short spot but it's everything I say it is.
I'm also a little fuzzy on the marketing idea at work here. I guess I'm trying to imagine the meeting when someone said, "Hey, you know what little girls all dream of doing?" Or maybe it has something to do with thinking that parents will buy the toy dog (and pooper scooper) to teach their daughters about being responsible when they someday get and walk real dogs. In which case they're going to then discover that the process is a bit messier than they thought…and not quite as odor-free.
And since it's doubtlessly on your mind, I'll ask: Is the plastic thing that comes out of the dog's rear the same piece of plastic that went in through the mouth? If so, doesn't that suggest the concept that you feed your dog crap? Or that crap is food? There are enough little girls around who are going to wind up anorexic without us planting that association in their fertile, young minds.
This is very disturbing. Very disturbing, indeed.
To get your mind off it, I offer the following embedded video of Liza Minnelli singing "New York, New York" on a 1982 TV special. Note that unlike the famous Sinatra version, she actually gets the words right. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with the video. Liza is actually slightly out of sync in real life. And then the next two days in this space, I'll be featuring what I think are two of the five (or so) most brilliant moments in the history of TV comedy. See if you can guess what they are.
