There’s a point when things are just taking it too far. When my mailman delivered the latest junk mail, with it came the usual slew of gift suggestions from your local retailer. Same old same old mostly; socks, candy, tinsel, suspect looking Rudolf… but then over the page I saw the add for this brand new Barbie doll…
Can you see what my problem was; what induced such horror? (aside from the fiendishly bad eye makeup and tack-o-rama jacket she’s wearing)
.
.
Barbie is a REAL working video camera! Way to give your child the gift of invasion of privacy for Christmas! Okay, I’m more than a little outraged that the manufacturers think that this sort of thing is a great idea for a young child’s toy. It’s bad enough that most 13 year old girls have camera phones with which to tape and bully each other with inappropriate footage on Facebook with, but this? This is akin to giving your child access to their very own Nanny cam for their own purposes.
When I was a child, my little brother learnt how to build radio bugs from a matchbox and bits of electronics, so that he could tape the conversations of my friends and I at sleep overs. This was a whole new kind of little brother hell to me that caused him a few punches in the nose. But imagine putting Barbie into the hands of a wily ten year old boy with something to prove? I’m imagining some school yard lunch time hell moments for their poor sisters. And what about the parents? Should I have to spend my evening hunting out surreptitiously placed Barbie dolls before I kick back with that evenings episode of CSI not fit for a seven year olds consumption?
I generally consider myself a fairly liberal individual, and I’m nothing if not an early adopter of technology; but I ask you, isn’t giving your child a video camera masquerading as a Barbie doll taking things a step to far??
What the …?
Reverse Nanny cam?
Never mind the fact that if you really wanted your child to have a video camera, you can pick up a pretty decent one for not much more than what they’re charging for the Barbie any way…..
But what is it with giving “kids” phones and video cameras etc? I saw a 2 year old with HER OWN iPod Touch the other day! I found out my 11 year old niece has a mobile phone… I almost fell off my chair.
I think it’s all a bit much… :S
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Candice DeVille and Candice DeVille, Kate Philip. Kate Philip said: RT @SuperKawaiiMama: What I will NOT be buying for Christmas. http://bit.ly/ewEC2K I am outraged. [...]
Hey SKM: I’m intrigued by your perspective, even as my kid has asked for (and will receive) this item for Xmas. She wants a video camera (she has 2 others but she uses them both to record her American Girl Dolls for video on her blog (her face is not shown, her real name is not used). She’s also always been fascinated by all dolls, including Barbie. We have talked about Barbie many times. She understands mass marketing. She’s horrified that Matel took over American Girl – as she feels it’s the ultimate consumerizing of her beloved toy brand. I don’t see the harm as long as there are open lines of communication. My daughter uses all of her toys, including technology, to make art. I’m kind of loathsome of Barbie and I suspect this toy may be a crappy doll and a crappy piece of tech. But hey, it’s Xmas.
Hey, me again. One other thing – my daughter (almost 11) is not allowed to bring toys to school. If she brought this – ostensibly to have fun with or to tape someone – it would be confiscated so fast she wouldn’t have time to turn it on. And she also knows that it’s completely inappropriate to tape anyone without consent. Oh, and all the kids know of this Barbie – the new thing. It would be pretty hard to tape each other surreptitiously given that they all recognize it. My point is, and I’ve been thinking about this since I read your post, I really don’t think this is any more “dangerous” than a regular video camera. (Of course, I agree that Barbie is a horrid, sexist toy from another generation, but so is practically everything mass produced toy out there. At a certain point you just have to start discussing it, deconstructing it and trusting in your kid’s savvy, unless you want to really buck the trend. There are some lines I won’t cross but this isn’t one of them.
K-Line: You’d be surprised just what a difference there is between kids in Australia and kids in the States. The doll here so far is virtually unknown, and my daughter (6) is still allowed to bring them to school. Something like this would go totally unnoticed by the teachers as a potential hazard. But if she brought an actually video camera to school, that wouldn’t be allowed and would be quickly seen as much more overt.
While I’m not against her using a video camera at all, in fact I let her use the one on my phone (she likes to record herself singing), I’m still ultimately in charge of the footage. It isn’t that I’m against kids having access to this technology full stop, but the subversive manner that it is presented in in this doll and the potential for misuse.
I imagine that in the market over there where everyone is aware of what this doll is, you’d be pretty aware if you saw it in your surroundings.. but here… not so much.
At 11, and with such a savvy mum like you, your daughter is far better positioned to handle the responsibility of something this than mine would be (at 6), to say nothing of sneaky siblings without much of a sense a conscience.
Having the conversation with my daughter about appropriate uses of technology and why some things are not okay, may be a bit much for her at the moment, to say nothing of the other questions it would raise. I’m having enough trouble trying to explain to her that when a kid copies the rainbow she is drawing, it isn’t the full blown intellectual property theft she thinks it is!
I hear you. I think I started all of the “personal privacy” and “mass marketing is preying on your plastic mind” conversations when M was about 6! So I’ve got years of precedent behind me
Your daughter is a total hoot.
I saw an ad for this Barbie while I was eating breakfast this morning and I nearly spit out my Cheerios. Children who are the target age for this product do not need to own their own video camera. When I was a kit, my Dad used to let me use his video camera occasionally to make videos of my brother and I putting on plays, and those tapes are treasured by our family. We were always supervised while we were using the camera. There is no way known that we would have been given a camera of our own.
This toy is practically inviting misuse. While I respect the opinion of the tech-savvy mum above me, I can guarantee that not every parent will monitor their child so carefully while they are using this doll. I’m sure that there will be plenty of parents who fail to educate their children about the appropriate use of this technology and don’t supervise the use of this toy. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
Also, I wanted agree with SKM that many of the children who recieve this doll won’t really be old enough to understand the implications of misuse, or even what constitutes misuse.
I just don’t understand why it is necessary to include a video camera in a doll, I don’t understand it on any level. If you want your child to have a video camera, then buy them one – it will make for some interesting projects I would imagine, especially if your child is 8 years+. If you want them to have a doll, then buy them one, they are great for imaginative play for any child, pretty much from birth. Why must everything have so many electronic bells and whistles? It is truly beyond me. Needless to say, Video Girl Barbie will not be in my shopping basket this Christmas.
It looks like a case of a manufacturer deciding that two products are increidbly popular, so surely it would be a fantastic idea to combine the two. Except it isn’t. It so definitely isn’t.
Urgh, this makes me feel a little sick. Why would Mattel do this? Kids that are old enough to understand the implications of using a toy such as this are past ‘Barbie’ age anyway. Let’s hope this toy doesn’t sell as well as anticipated.
And when did Barbie start dressing so badly? All my Barbie’s wore pretty dresses, hats and even had matching clutch bags… Way to go Mattel!
Personally, I just think it’s kind of weird. Who wants to dress up Barbie with a giant screen eating it’s way out of her back? I’d much rather shell out the cash and get my kid a real camera and a real Barbie doll if they wanted both.
I saw this and thought the “hole’ in her chest was hideous, the clothing ……….well……….what can you say ?? There is also a video camera masquerading as a helicopter if I recall , I know it flys and is remote controlled. The ad shows an abnoxious child with this toy sneaking up on an older sibling who is with their date !!
i find the hole in her chest the most disturbing part of it all. Who wants a doll that looks like they’re having open heart surgery?
yikes!!!!
Yep, it was the creepy hole-in-her-chest-screen-in-her-back thing that did it for me.
That said, what kind of recording capacity does this thing have? If it does 30 seconds of video, and you can play it back, but the next thing you record tapes over the previous thing with no way to transfer footage, I don’t really see a problem with it. No different to the toys I had in the early 90s that would record 30 seconds of audio to play back.
But I guess The Technologies has improved, and things May Be Different now.
Super creepy and also $70 for a doll. You know that camera is going to be broken inside a week in most cases. Save the bucks and get a real present.
Hey Candice,
You’r not the only one.
“FBI: New Barbie ‘Video Girl’ doll could be used for child porn”
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/12/03/fbi.barbie.porn/index.html?hpt=C2
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/04/video-girl-barbie-co.html