Fashion Fever Shopping Boutique, the correctly named Barbie toy, features a built-in credit card swiper and a life-size credit card for young children to use when buying outfits for their dolls. According to the Amazon website, “Once the balance hits zero, it will reset so you can continue to shop.”
We can’t find a copy of the commercial online (can anyone send in a link?), but according to posts all around the web, it features a little girl crying out, “And you never run out of money!”
[Update: thanks to readers Wesa and Pda_tech_guy, here's a low-quality YouTube clip of the commercial.]
We think Mattel should introduce the “Dang, I Grew Up” Barbie playset, where Barbie spends her entire paycheck on Rent-a-Center furniture while trying to make the minimum payments on her dozen or so 30% interest rate cards. But then again, since this is Barbie, once her credit score hit 300 or so the playset would probably just bump it back up to 800. Responsibility is so for nerds and foster children.
(Thanks to David!)
“Barbie Fashion Fever Shopping Boutique Playset” [Amazon]
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@jinjin1080:
I’m giving you the MVP of this blog.
Your post says it all
I don’t think it’s a big deal. A pre-schooler is not getting a credit card anyway. I would hope that by the time they are 18 or so, they understand they can’t spend at will. If they don’t then they are either a moron or severely spoiled.
Apparently the folks at Mattel didn’t learn their lesson from the last time they pulled this stunt. They’ve been reprimanded for a very similar product before – guess they just can’t resist those CC company dollars to subsidize their products. Was this one branded like the last one?
Also, anyone saying that “its just a toy” and “parents should be teaching kids” obviously doesn’t have kids. That or your kids live in some bubble where they aren’t influenced by other kids and aren’t bombarded by stupid advertising like this.
There’s a better version of the video…
Great social values there!
@wring: It’s worse than the Dora cash register preparing my child for a career in cashiering
What’s even more alarming is the fact that I’ve worked with lots of college-aged employees who can’t count change at all. At least the Dora cash register might help get kids started down the road to actually knowing how to count money.
@liquisoft: hey, when I was a kid, I had a toy printing press that had a plate for play money, and I didn’t turn out to be a counterfeiter. (Not that I’d admit it if I did, heh.)
I knew that Barbie was messed up when they did the Star Trek Barbie and she wasn’t the captain.
this just reinforces the ‘i want that!’ attitude when you take kids to the store. If they think the credit cards have unlimited money, then of COURSE it doesn’t make sense when you refuse to buy them some piece of junk they want. Not only will it make them bad money managers later, but it will add to our own parenting woes.
Oh dear. It seems Barbie has come up with yet another way to mess up little girls. Fashion Fever Shopping Boutique, the correctly named Barbie toy, features a built-in credit card swiper and a life-size credit card for young children to use when buying outfits for their dolls.
Sukmawati Suryaman used Barbie as the inspiration to create a more modest doll for Muslim children. Salma wears long-sleeved prayer dresses, abayas, and head scarves, "making Salma's conservative clothing more familiar to [Indonesian] children than the glittering, pop-star inspired outfits…
@Ryuuie: They divorced several years ago. I’m serious: Mattel came out with a statement that Ken and Barbie had parted ways.
this kind of rubbish teaches kids that they not only have rights to unlimited money, but that the important things in life amount to consumerism…ugh! I know SO many people who are like that and it’s disgusting…Their highest priority isn’t high school, but the next one-wear-only-overpriced-outfit to wear to the next let’s-get-wasted-party.
When I was small my Barbie was more of a family-type. I played with friends and yeah, we had fun dressing them up, but the little skits we played out were more realistic than just going to the mall. They had proper lives with nice friends and decent homes…and they were more interested in making pizza than dressing up. Hm. I wonder how all that changed. This is something that really riles me up…but I’ll stop myself from ranting here.