In the early 1990s, mega toy company Mattel struggled to sell Ken dolls and searched for a solution. They began with a focus group of Barbie’s target demographic, young girls, who were asked if they thought Barbie and Ken should break up. The consensus was that the Barbie fans still
Tag: toys
The Barbie Liberation Organization or BLO, sponsored by RTMark, are a group of artists and activists involved in culture jamming. They gained notoriety in 1993 by switching the voice boxes on talking G.I. Joes and Barbie dolls. The BLO performed “surgery” on a reported 300–500 dolls and then returned them
When was the last time you went through the aisles of your local toy store? Have you looked at the recent array of children’s toys targeted at girls? Recently, I went to get a children’s gift and I found myself not familiar with any of the toys that I had
When I was about seven years old, I remember walking into our local Round Table pizza parlor with my soccer teammates and rushing to the arcade area to see all the toys I could buy with my saved up quarters. While my parents would start to order pizza, my teammates
For my reverse consumption project in Art and Crime, I chose to play off the body image depicted with dolls. There is no question these dolls influence what young children, especially girls, believe about what a proper body image is. As you can see, I chose to “mock” (for lack