Word: dolling
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They weren't the first designer plush dolls, and they probably won't be the last, but a cast of 15 unattractive, ever evolving characters called Uglydolls?each accompanied by a quirky, amusing narrative?have plopped down at the forefront of the designer-toy movement. The dolls' creators, David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim, are themselves outsiders in a nearly monopolized corporate toy industry. Their first doll, a snaggle-toothed, apron-donning orange blob named Wage who, the story goes, works at a grocery store and lives for chocolate-chip-cookie dough, was born...
Since then, over a million Uglydolls have been sold in 2,500 stores around the world (including high-end retailers like Barneys and Takashimaya), and last year Kim and Horvath's company, Pretty Ugly, did $2.5 million in sales. The dolls have amassed a cult following, with a fifth-anniversary convention, UglyCon, to be held in Los Angeles in December. "I'll bet there are toy-company boardrooms filled with Uglydoll samples and that they're scratching their heads as to why it works and why they didn't do it first," says Eric Nakamura, owner of L.A.-based Asian...
...soon find out. The San Francisco Chronicle recently had 16 toys tested in a private lab. One rubber ducky contained the phthalate DEHP at 13 times San Francisco's allowed level. A teether contained another phthalate at five times the limit. Meanwhile, a rattle, two waterproof books and a doll contained BPA, which is prohibited by the city at any level. Although the products comply with U.S. law, some toymakers, including Goldberger Doll, are cutting out phthalates. Richard Woo, owner of a local store called Citikids, estimates that he might have to pull a third of his items...
Kick-starting his run for the White House four years early, the perennially well-coiffed Mitt morphed into a talking-points Ken doll (Mehlman that is, although his handsome, rather plasticine features are reminiscent of the Mattel icon), traveling around the country and spouting Republican dogma when wound up. And when he is in Massachusetts, he utilizes his powers as chief executive largely as a mechanism by which to appeal to the Republican Party base...
...change, the status quo. Enrique Chagoya’s simple modification of Goya’s 1799 etchings against the censorship and suppression of Enlightenment ideas, “Los Caprichos,” fashion them to fit issues of import 200 years later. A tiny Tinky Winky Teletubby doll stands witness to continued relevance of protest art like Goya’s. Though the inclusion of such disparate works may initially seem to belie the show’s profession of a unified theme, viewers should eventually find a method to the madness. Even in the seemingly chaotic first...