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The news that the Sasha and Malia dolls are no more depresses me for one reason: Why didn't I realize that the Ty Co. would "retire" them, as it did with Beanie Babies back in the day, and buy up as many as I could find to sell on eBay? Mariah and Sydney—as the dolls, unchanged in appearance, have been renamed—just won't appreciate in value the same way.
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I agree with Marjorie, Bonnie and everyone else that using Malia and Sasha Obama's images for fun and profit is beyond gross. However, my mother pointed out the one upshot to this capitalist debacle: Little girls of all races might want to play with black dolls now. I am reminded of a recent This American Life show in which a former FAO Schwartz employee talked about a coveted brand of baby dolls. The store ran out of white dolls, and so white moms were relegated to buying Asian dollies. After the Asian babies went the Latino babies. The black baby dolls were left to languish under the cheap industrial lighting. With the creation of Malia and Sasha dolls, the girls' privacy may be slightly violated, but it might change the ethnic makeup of the toy box.
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Samantha,
I don't think it's fair to compare Obama allowing his girls to accompany him on the campaign trail to the Ty Co.'s shameless marketing of Sasha and Malia dolls for profit. In American politics, it's standard operating procedure, and the expectation of voters, for political candidates—especially male candidates seeking high office—to show that they are "family-oriented men," i.e., husbands and fathers who love baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolets. For some irrational reason, images of candidates standing with their wives and children grants them legitimacy in the eyes of voters, no matter if they are cheating cads like John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, or the legions of other skirt-chasing politicians who are too many to name here. Obama may have thrust his daughters in the public eye, as you say, but I don't think he "cashed in" on his daughters' cuteness. He didn't try to promote them in books, market them as dolls, or put their pictures on T-shirts. Granted, his cutie-pie daughters did melt some voters' hearts—how could someone with such typically precocious American children be a closet Muslim terrorist and secret black militant?—and demystified their daddy with the weird name and nontraditional background. Still, no amount of cuteness can get you the White House if you don't have the goods the run the place. Just look at Sarah Palin and her boatload of cute kids. McCain's brood isn't too shabby, either, although the cute factor diminishes after age 10. G.W. Bush's win was an anomaly, and one I'd not like to see repeated.
Obama certainly could not lock his girls in the family's basement until after the campaign. They are a legitimate and important part of his personal bio, much as Chelsea Clinton and the two Bush girls were for their dads. And sometimes, Obama aides have said, he just missed his family and wanted them with him.
The Obamas certainly do not forfeit their right to be outraged by companies exploiting their children's names. Although I argued for limiting the girls' exposure in the media, I don't think that Mom and Dad have crossed good-parenting lines. I just think it opens them up to more people feeling entitled to take liberties with their daughters' privacy. That's why I think they should be careful. I wouldn't be surprised if their displeasure with the Sasha and Malia dolls caused them to pull the girls back a bit.
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... if I were 8, these are the dolls I would want. OK, I kind of want them now. Mattel is releasing three Star Trek Barbies as tie-ins to the upcoming J.J. Abrams' remake of the original 1960s series (which features some genius casting: John Cho as Sulu, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and, um, Tyler Perry as the president of Starfleet Academy). The Uhura doll is experiencing some serious head-to-body ratio issues, but I think even Beyoncé would approve of that hot high ponytail. And they actually gave her a phaser!
(h/t to Wired's Underwire blog)