We as a people have come a long way, but have much further to go! Let me just say, as a person of color I know I'm not bugging, just bugging out on what I see, hear, and feel.
Click on the image for a larger version, and notice how the diaper fits both baby and monkey. That part of the packaging is just a starting point of what is so wrong with this product.
5 comments:
OMG! That's horrible! We know the kind of people who will buy these and not for children but for what they think is funny. I hope they get a lot of complaints and take them off the market. I'm going to send one to Costco and the company that makes them.
Sorry an unfinished sentence.
As an artist, I am trained to trust the process and to not placed my sentiments on the products. Having said that, I do not blame you for your reaction to this product, which is so loaded with racist metaphors. As a child I used to love stuffed monkeys. I even had a collection of 6 or 7 of them. Anything monkey draws my attention, but it wasn't until I came to live in the main land, that I was confronted with the monkey as a racist metaphor. Did down inside I want to hope that the person that designed this product is not a racist asshole, Yet in the midst of the times we are living, that Monkey has travelled campaign trails, the internet, and so many other venues all in relation to our first black president. So there is too much of a correspondance between the same monkey, mind you, used as a racist tool against our president. So I have no other recourse than to see it as another racist projection, with the intentions to affect our children minds. Not only does I see this toy as offensive, to me it is a sick product design to harm young children perception of themselves and others.
This was obviously made in China where as a homogenous society the negative racial connotations of things with respect to the U.S. aren’t understood. That being said, an American born and raised buyer for Costco approved the purchase of this item for store shelves and they don't get the same pass as a Chinese manufacturer who fills an order picked by Costco. This item passed many hands for approval before it hit a shelf in the United States and heads need to roll. There's also the issue of language translation; Chinese manufacturers are legendary for using Babble Fish to translate American words and ending up with the totally wrong saying. Even still Costco buyers should have caught it. I suspect that they had spent too much on the whole purchase and shipping and said, "fuck it" stick it in communities that have a lower concentration of minorities and or whites who'll be offended by the dolls so it isn't a total loss.
it's not cute
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