Sunday, March 7, 2021
19 comments:
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中國詞不評論，冒抹除的風險。僅英語。
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So then, for #3, why did the Left force the change? Why not just leave it alone?
ReplyDelete#3 is about plastic potatoes and the Right's batshit craziness over a corporate decision.
ReplyDeleteThought you conservative types believed in the sanctity of private property, B. Nobody twisted any arms here.
ReplyDeleteThe tale of our favorite spud is much the same. Mr Potato Head is not ceasing to exist, nor is his wife and assumed lover Mrs Potato Head. Hasbro, the owners of the Potato Head family line of toys, is simply changing the brand’s name to Potato Head, which reflects the reality that it covers the Mr, the Mrs and a growing family of potatoes that they seek to sprout in the near future.
And quite the opposite of cancellation is on the horizon. Dr Seuss books are seeing a boost in overall sales, and the books pulled from the shelves are selling for up to $500 online. Hasbro is expecting a similar bump to sales. Its CEO has said he expects double-digit growth in the next year, and the rebranding and expansion of the Potato Head line may be a part of the equation. Whether or not these were calculated marketing strategies is unknowable, but they fall into a well-established pattern in which corporations try to clean up their pasts and appeal to the public in a way that won’t negatively affect their ability to reap profits.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/06/dr-seuss-mr-potato-head-cancel-culture
Only a commie would object to an American company doing something as capitalist as appealing to their target audience.
DA, you're just objecting to Right-Wing cancel culture.
ReplyDeleteMr. Potato Head is the next icon of the Republican Party. A bit starchy for some, but you can roast him, bake him, mash him, or scallop him, and he still remains true to his American roots. Or tubers, as the case may be.
ReplyDeleteDo you really think that Hasbro wanted to spend all that money on rebranding? That they did this voluntarily?
ReplyDeleteIf they did so voluntarily, then yes, I fully support it. Their product, tey can do as they wish.
B,
ReplyDeleteThe market is changing and these companies are adjusting their product line to reflect that reality.
A move that the GOP should take note of.
B, the next change is to make Cootie a hemaphrodite.
ReplyDeleteIt's called (((The Invisible Hand of the Market)))
ReplyDeleteRemember how the Right got so upset over the discontinuation of Aunt Jemima products or the Old Black Sambo line of tires?
ReplyDeleteTimes change. Language changes. Those who pine for the "good old days" are pining for the days when rich people were taxed at 90%.
B,the left has been doing this for years, that's why the Ken and G.I. Joe dolls never had a "package".
ReplyDeleteWrong side of the aisle, Dan. It's the Right that would have had a real problem with anatomically-correct dolls.
ReplyDeleteOf course Ken and G.I. Joe dolls never had a package, they're Republicans.
ReplyDeleteHousekeeping note: right back at ya', Cap'n, it takes a special kind ...
A quick glance at Hasbro's earnings numbers doesn't reveal any particularly dire trends, nor any particularly optimistic ones, so perhaps this whole thing is mostly about calling attention to a laggardly selling legacy product to juice its earnings with the publicity? Their earnings are in the billions.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Sugar Pine
It wasn't "BLACK" Sambo tires. Yer confuzed.
ReplyDeleteLittle Black Sambo was a book that the Liberals took umbrage at (even though the main character wasn't African, but rather East Asian).
Sambos was a chain of tire shops (No "black" in the name) There was also a chain of restaurants called "Sambos" that was killed because of the outry....They had nothing to do with the book about the Indian boy.
But don't let reality get in the way of your meme....
While there was nothing particularly startling about Bannerman’s plot, it was the illustrations accompanying the narrative that garnered the attention of American civil rights activists in the 1930s and 1940s. In various editions of the book, Sambo is depicted as having very dark skin that is juxtaposed against the whites of his eyes and teeth, a broad nose, and a wide smile. While set in India and about an Indian protagonist, the illustrations matched what African-Americans such as Langston Hughes recognized immediately to be the “pickaninny.” In Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (2011), Robin Bernstein writes, “The pickaninny was an imagined, subhuman black juvenile who was typically depicted outdoors, merrily accepting (or even inviting) violence” (34). In response to the suggestion that Bannerman’s book was nothing more than a simple children’s story, Hughes would cut to the quick of American race relations saying that Little Black Sambo was “amusing undoubtedly to the white child, but like an unkind word to one who has known too many hurts to enjoy the additional pain of being laughed at” (Qtd. in Pilgrim). Additionally, the term “Sambo” had already gained currency in America as a black archetype, particularly, a black servant who was “loyal and contented” (Pilgrim). This was by no means limited to the United States. In 1974, a West Indian factory worker in Britain charged with assaulting his co-worker for calling him “Sambo” was informed by the presiding judge that “Sambo” was nothing more than a playful term used between workmates and hardly justified assault (Dunkling 215).
ReplyDeletehttps://www.saada.org/tides/article/little-black-sambo
Ah, don’t you wish for the good old days?
Comrade Misfit, I was being sarcastic , sometimes it doesn't show as well in print as in my head.
ReplyDeleteThe owners, be they Hasbro, the Seuss estate, or Sambos, choose to hemerophyte their plastic potatoes, to discontinue print or change the name. The owners made the choice. Why they choose to do what they do ain't nobody's business but their own.
ReplyDeleteAre you suggesting the owners don't have the right to make that choice?
The Free Market is sacred, except when it doesn’t reinforce the forces of God and Country by pandering to the Almighty Dollar.
ReplyDelete