Category: kids/family life

Bratz Cease-and-Desist Shocker!

Ivan Kreilkamp13 Comments

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Forget the boring old Big Three Auto maker bailout hearings — for parents of pre-Tween girls, the major business news this week is Mattel and Barbie’s resounding victory over MGA and their upstart Bratz dolls.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The rowdy Bratz dolls have been evicted. Barbie has regained control of the dollhouse.

Toy giant Mattel Inc., after a four-year legal dispute with MGA Entertainment Inc., touted its win in the case Wednesday after a federal judge banned MGA from making and selling its pouty-lipped and hugely popular Bratz dolls.

“It’s a pretty sweeping victory,” Mattel attorney Michael Zeller said. “They have no right to use Bratz for any goods or services at all.”

U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson rocked the toy industry with his order that MGA must immediately stop manufacturing Bratz….

The decision was a stunning defeat for MGA, which exploded onto the tween scene in 2001 with the edgy dolls and made hundreds of millions in profits, giving Mattel’s more classic doll-diva Barbie a run for her money….

Mattel has fought to neutralize the Bratz line for years. The dolls — with their huge lips, pug noses, almond-shaped eyes and coquettish figures — were an instant hit with young girls. MGA had taken Bryant’s original four dolls and spun out a line of more than 40 characters, complete with accessories and related toys such as Bratz Boyz, Bratz Petz and Baby Bratz…. The judge’s injunction named all 40 dolls in the Bratz line, including the four originals — Yasmine, Chloe, Sasha and Jade.

I have been living in fear of the day when Celie and Iris learn about Bratz, Barbie’s evil, “sassy” (a.k.a. hyper-sexualized) cousins.

Note however that the judge “allowed MGA to wait until the holiday season ends to remove the toys from store shelves.”  But will any sane parent purchase a Bratz doll now knowing that repair/maintenance services, including the necessary silicon/Botox refresher treatments, will be discontinued in February???

Puppet Show: Mousie and Bunny — Fights and Friendship

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Celie and Iris got a new puppet theater today as a belated birthday present.  They wrote and performed their first three-act play: Mousie and Bunny — Fights and Friendship.

Dramatis personae: Mousie and Bunny

Act I.

One day Mousie went to a puppet show and he met Bunny.

Bunny: I am the biggest bunny in the world!

Mousie: And I am the squeakiest thing in the world and I like to steal cheese.

Bunny: You are mischievous and I say STOP or I will put a trap out.

Mousie: If you do, I will put out a bigger trap.

Bunny: You are so bad!

They fight and start crying: Boo hoo.

Act II.

Bunny:  It’s your birthday Mousie and because your mommy is sick I’m going to make you a big cake.

Mousie: I’m going to bring the knives and forks and everything.

Bunny: I am going to give you the best birthday party of all.

Mousie and Bunny: YIPPEE!!!

They embrace and kiss.

Act III.

One day Bunny went to the Chocolate Moose store.  Then he saw his friend Mousie.

Bunny: Hey Mousie, why don’t we get chocolate with rainbow sprinkles.

Mousie: I want chocolate with chocolate sprinkles.

Bunny: No!  You should have chocolate with rainbow sprinkles, like me!

Mousie: No!  You should have chocolate with chocolate sprinkles, like me!

Both shout: You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong!

And cry: boo hoo hoo.

Feckless Budgeting and Bad Math

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This is an amusing article (with a poignant side):

Kathy Peel, a Dallas-based family manager (that is, a life coach whose niche is training families to run their homes like businesses), said that incidences of feckless budgeting and bad math seem to be on the rise, at least judging from the reports of coaches trained in her system. Leslie McKee, a Peel-trained family manager in Pittsburgh, has noticed a pattern of “people signing up for discount stores that sell in bulk and over-purchasing ‘bargains’ that are so enormous they will not live long enough to use the item,” she said. “Then they call me and spend more money to help them organize it all into mini-malls inside their homes.”

I wonder if we could re-train in order to run our house as a profitable business.  Is there a market out there for products like cat poop, platefuls of rejected frozen peas, and avant-garde stagings of kittens being born out of eggs?

Ice Cream Social

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Everyone’s feeling kind of happy and giddy.  Last night we went to an “ice cream social” at Obama headquarters downtown for volunteers.  It was nice.  The building they’ve been in used to house Tortilla Flats, but then (Steve tells me) they sold their liquor license and later lost all their business and gave up.  So the Obama folks took over the building, and now it is going to be destroyed next week.  They had paint and markers and were drawing and writing on the walls.  Celie and Iris really liked that — made a bunch of heart people and flowers, and wrote their names.

We ran into someone we know, a retired prof, who has been volunteering for the campaign since the summer of 2007!  It was cool to reflect that Indiana went blue because of all the people like him.  We found out that a number of other people we knew were also canvassing in Bedford on Tuesday.  Maybe it made a difference.

Let’s see, what else to say.  Iris and Celie were most interested in Obama’s line about Malia and Sasha having “earned that puppy.”  Possibly they are trying to figure out how they too can earn a puppy.  (Focus on earning the two kittens you already have, is my advice.)  I missed this, but apparently Sarah was watching Obama’s acceptance speech on tape with the girls and Iris cried: “because he’s just so good,” she said, overcome by all the emotion.

In a way, thinking about Malia and Sasha in the White House is one of the most surreal things.  So amazing that they will be the first children of the country.  I hope they can manage to enjoy it.

Real Mouse Magic

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Am I overdoing it with the girls’ stories?  Celie brought home another one:

One day a little mouse went on a trip.  And the airplane was so big that he thought it was a giant.  And he went to… uh, India.  And India — it was so fancy that he couldn’t believe his eyes.  And he went to a very fancy house and he had a cookie and some milk.  And then it started to get dark and he said “I better get back to my real house in India.”  And he went to bed.  And in the morning he got dressed and went to school and he played with a puzzle.  And his momma came and he said, “Momma I did magic.  Real magic.  Real mouse magic.”  Real mouse magic.   The end.

I remain uncertain about where and when the Real Mouse Magic was applied in this story.  Does it take mouse magic to travel to India?

The Little Kitten, Baby Mouse, & Baby Snake

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Iris came home with another doozy of a story.

Once upon a time there was a little kitten.  And he found a baby mouse.  And the mouse said, “I live in a farm.  And they make fun of me because they think my body is very small and I’m so small that I can climb up on them.  But I heard them whispering that they’re making a plan.  To make a fire because they think that if they made a fire they would think that I would think that it would be interesting to look up at closer.  And then they think that I would fall into the fire and die.  But I won’t go near it because then I would die but I don’t want to die.  That’s the whole thing I went out the farm.”  And the kitten said, “Then I can help you because I am very strong and scary.  Because I can arch my back and then they might run away.  And if that doesn’t work I could put my claws out and they would probably run away.”  And then the kitten said, “I have an even better idea.  I will put my claws out and arch my back at the same time.”  The end.

Celie’s is much more cheerful and less complicated this time:

One day a little snake went on a trip.  And he found another baby snake.  And the other little baby snake said, “I’m lost and I can’t find my house.  Can you help me?”  “Yes, I can.”  So he took she to her home and they had dinner and breakfast together.  And then they went on a little bike ride.  And then they went to the palace.  And then they went on a trip to the moon.  And then they went to the pet store to get a little puppy.  And then the first little snake said, “I’m bored.  I want to go to my friend bear’s house.  Come on!”  And they went there and bear was there and they had lots of candy.  The end.

The common denominator here is, I guess, the twin theme of companionship and friendship.  For Celie it’s pure fun: sleep-overs, candy, and the care-taking of pets; for Iris it’s banding together in the face of peer bullying, mockery & violence.  But baby animals can protect themselves and their friends by acting bigger than they really are.  If you put your claws out and arch your back, people might think you’re strong and scary even if you’re just a little kitten.  (This is definitely true of Pot Luck.)

An unusual farm and the giraffe’s birthday

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The girls came home with these stories they’d narrated to a teacher.  They’re very nicely illustrated as well but I will just transcribe.

Iris:

Once upon a time there was a little goat.  And he lived in a very unusual farm.  Because the farmer and the farmwife didn’t let him make milk.  But one day he got an idea.  He would trick the farmer and wife.  So he hid behind the milk shed.  He poked the farmer and the wife.  And then he trotted off on a walk.  So that the farmer and his wife thought he was gone.  And then he found a little filly and the filly said, “I live on a farm that’s bright red.  And it has roosters, a cow, and my mommy and daddy horses.  So I need someone to help me get back to the farm.”  And the goat said, “And who would that be?”  “That would be someone who’s smart and who has a tail and can pull me along.”  “That would be me, because I’m smart and I have a tail and I know where the farm is.”  And the pony said, “Ok, then I’ll tie my tail to your tail and you start trotting.”  The end.

And Celie’s:

Once upon a time a little giraffe was so excited because it was his birthday today.  And he had a cake ready and all his friends were there.  And they played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and he won.  And then they played checkers.  And then they played dress-up.  And he was the king.  And his sister was the princess.  And the king said, “Princess, go ask your servant to clean the walls.”  And the servant did it.  Soon the walls were shiny clean.  And the servant said, “I am tried of working like this.”  And she asked the princess and king if she could stop.  And they said, “Well… Okay.”  The End.

All I can say is, wow. I am supposed to be some kind of professional analyst of narrative, but I hardly know where to begin.

Shopping at Aldi

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Do you know Aldi Foods, my yuppie friend?

They are basically Trader Joe’s for non-yuppies.  We were on the West side for some reason a month or two ago near our local Aldi and Sarah mentioned that her deeply-broke painter friend Annie loves it, so we decided to give it a try.  I was a bit weirded out by the whole experience but had to admit that it was very, very cheap.  Later I read this article about it in the NY Times where I learned the whole fascinating Aldi saga.

The chain’s low-key style reflects its reclusive, elderly founders, the octogenarian German billionaires Theo and Karl Albrecht, who reportedly live on the island of Föhr in the North Sea, where they are said to collect typewriters, play golf and tend to orchids. In 1971, Theo was kidnapped for 17 days, and the brothers have kept a low profile ever since.

The brothers split the business in two in the early 1960s, after a disagreement over whether to sell cigarettes. There are now two companies, Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud, which owns the United States division. In 1979, Theo Albrecht bought the Trader Joe’s chain, which shares Aldi’s small-store format, its reliance on private-label brands and its reputation for value, albeit in a hipper and more upscale way.

So, it’s not that Aldi is like Trader Joe’s, it’s that Trader Joe’s is the latest incarnation/secondary rebranding of Aldi.  Trader Joe’s is just Aldi with more attitude and better graphic design.  To quote the Times again,

Its stores are small and spartan, with minimal décor and a limited selection of products. They are often found in nondescript shopping strips and lack the flashy signs and window displays of some competitors. Grocery carts cost a quarter apiece, which is refundable after the cart is returned….What makes Aldi so special is that, quite simply, its prices are cheaper than just about anyone else’s, including Wal-Mart’s.

We returned to Aldi this weekend, and I will testify that, yes, the prices are really low.  Like, I am used to paying $3.50 or something at the organic co-op for a jar of raspberry jelly (the girls go through that stuff at a frightening rate as it is one of the 5 or so food types they will eat); maybe at Kroger’s I’d pay $2.79 for a larger jar.  At Aldi it was $1.49 a jar.  Now, I haven’t tried it yet, so maybe it’s crap [note: it turned out to be excellent], but the ingredients seem fine and the Times article reassured me that the food at Aldi was not there because it was lead-contaminated or anything like that, but instead because those typewriter-collecting octogenarian German billionaires drive a hard bargain, get bulk discounts and do not indulge in any frills like free shopping bags, free use of grocery carts, credit cards (debit only) or much shelving.  Nope, they basically stick the crate of food on the floor with a little sign and let the thrifty customers do the rest.

Some of the items are a bit sketchy-seeming and you’re definitely not going to find organic food here — we didn’t buy any meat — but on the other hand, you do find some surprising little European items like those chewy candy Haribo raspberries (for 75 cents a bag or some such).  There’s only one kind of most items and the corn flakes are not the brand you’re used to, but they are $1.15 a box.

Being a real cheapskate, I kind of dig the no-free-shopping-cart or shopping bags atmosphere, which almost feels East German or something.  It’s almost perverse — how much money do they really save by making you shell out the quarter for use of the cart, which you get back if you return the cart properly?  They need fewer employees, I guess, so it sort of makes sense.

I should buy some Aldi stock.

This post inaugurates a new category, btw: Livin’ in the Recession.