They’ve apparently done this before, but for some reason they didn’t keep making them.
It’s not just that (as Mad said in a 1960s piece spoofing toymakers) aside from the color of the plastic, we’re all made from the same mold. They tried to be faithful to reality:
But this piece from further down really threw me.
Oreo Fun Barbie???
I can see making a Barbie with an Oreo-themed purse, but making a Black Barbie called Oreo Fun Barbie amazes me. Heck – they have market analysis and everything. Didn’t anyone point out that this might not be a really good idea?
Yeah, I’m a little confused here too. I live in a very integrated neighborhood, and there has never been a shortage of black Barbie dolls on the shelves.
People will never stop going apeshit over what Barbie looks like, will they? I had black and white Barbies as a kid, plus whatever the hell Midge was, and I never said, “Hey! Black Barbie’s lips aren’t full enough!” You wanna know what I did with my Barbies? I made them drive around in a Corvette, and used them as actresses in the plays I wrote.
Edit: Folks, it’s not about having a black Barbie, which has been around since I don’t know when, which was the same, exact thing as white Barbie, except with brown skin. It’s about revamping the black Barbie to make her facial features and hair look more black.
So, basically an Asian version of the oreo? I’d never heard that one before. But then I almost never heard oreo either; I don’t think that concept was very prevalent in Toronto in the 70s and 80s, at least not around where I lived.
I’m from Korea-light, so I’ve heard this many times. Yeah, pretty much the Asian equivalent of Oreo.
Anyway, unless I’m mistaken, they didn’t make an Oreo Black Barbie. They made an Oreo Barbie, and there was a black version, because there’s always a black version. Then some people got upset, because some people always need something to get upset about.
I’m sure that the Oreo Barbie fiasco was just the result of someone not being fully aware of a semi-obscure piece of slang.
Well, that and the fact that Nabisco probably threw a whole lotta money at them for the product tie-in. They probably had a Chips Ahoy Fun Barbie too.
In Toronto, the derogatory term I usually heard for Asians who acted “too white” was “banana”. One of my friends from Montreal used to hear the same thing (he’s of Southeast Asian descent but was adopted by a white family as a toddler, so he’s dealt with that accusation more than once).
“obscure”? Oreo as a slang term is pretty well known. And, as I noted, they have folks in market research. No way they should’ve missed the implications.
It’s not that they made an Oreo Barbie with a cookie-like bag. It’s that they made her a black Barbie. It’s amazing that anyone could miss the implications. A White Barbie with an Oreo bag wouldn’t have elicited any comments.
There WAS a white Oreo Fun Barbie. The problem was they produce most tie-in Barbies in both white and black skin tones, and did so with the cookie Barbies (as mentioned, there was also a Chips Ahoy Barbie) without catching the implication. There was a black doll with a Chips Ahoy theme and a white doll with an Oreo cookie theme, but those didn’t raise any eyebrows. If standard practice at the time was “make 15% of all tie-in dolls with black skin tone”, it’s unlikely they stopped to examine the specifics of each and every one.
I’m from Los Angeles, which has a large Korean population, and spent maybe three years living here. This wiki reads like it was written by some guy who moved to LA last week, but the point is there are shit tons of Koreans where I’m from.
I guess us “people of color” (whatever the PC term is nowadays) are probably more likely to hear these things. Of course you generally get called Twinkie by other Asians. I know it well because my bf is Chinese…and kind of a Twinkie, I admit.
I don’t know that they’ve come up with an equivalant term for Indians, though. Brownies aren’t white in the middle…hmm. Give it another generation. All of my peers that grew up here are now having children that are fully Americanized; no doubt some of the immigrants in the next generation will have nice words for them.
MeanOldLady’s clarification changes things though. If it’s just a black version of the Oreo barbie, then people got up in arms over nothing, really.
well, not over nothing – it’s implications should still have been caught. But the news report i cited didn’t mention that the Oreo Barbie came in both colors, which is either a lapse in investigation or selective journalism, both bad.
