Story here. I honestly don’t think the German toymaker is *trying * to be racist. But man oh man, get a load of that doll. It does not look anything like the man. The skin color is way too dark. The face is round instead of Obama’s more elongated shape. I see no resemblance at all. And yet they’re reporting “brisk” sales at US$216 each??? I guess it’s true that people will buy anything.
Excerpt: “He admits that the physical resemblance to Obama could have been closer. ‘The doll works more on a symbolic level,’ he said. ‘It’s a symbiosis of the clothing and the fact it’s a black doll.’ Although ‘90 percent’ of the feedback so far has been positive, he admits that ‘10 percent of people said the doll doesn’t look like Obama’.”
I’m sorry, I think this is hilarious. In a bad way, of course. Ahem. But come on: That doll looks nothing like Barak Obama. They’ve put your generic “liittle black boy” doll in a suit.
Put a Kangol cap on it and it’s a Samuel L. Jackson doll. Put a judicial robe on it and it’s a Clarence Thomas doll. Put it in a pair of boxing trunks and it’s a Mohammad Ali doll.
“He admits the physical resemblance could have been closer.” Hee hee hee.
I don’t either, but jeez. It doesn’t look a thing like Obama, and asking people to assume “black guy in a suit = Obama” treads right up to the edge of stereotyping. Who’d want to buy that anyway?
… he asked, with a shudder, figuring his mother would probably buy it if she were German. Which in itself is a scary idea.
This must be the outfit that makes all those bobblehead dolls of baseball players. None of them ever seem to look anything like their supposed subjects either.
I heard an interview with the dollmaker on NPR and at one point he was asked if he had plans to make a Hillary doll. (I think this was before her campaign “suspension.”) He hemmed and hawed a bit and then said something about how it would be too hard to get the resemblance right. It’s even funnier now that I’ve seen the Obama doll.
