Bebe Gloton and breast-feeding

When I first heard about “Bebe Gloton,” or “Baby Glutton,” “I wasn’t sure what to think,” said Lylah M. Alphonse in The Boston Globe. One the one hand, the Spanish doll—which simulates breast-feeding (watch Bebe Gloton/Baby Glutton in action)—emphasizes that breasts are for “nourishment, not sexuality,” a nice contrast with the “highly sexualized Barbie and Bratz dolls.” On the other hand, “a little girl strapping on fake breasts” to nurture her doll “makes me squirm” a bit.

I know what to think—it’s a “sucky” idea, said Eric Ruhalter in the New Jersey Star-Leger. I’m all for mothers breast-feeding their babies, but this seems a little "creepy.” And do we really want to be “plugging” a nursing “halter/bra” to girls right before puberty, when we “start beating it into their heads that it’d better be a loooooong time before they get pregnant”?

Don’t thousands of dolls “come with little milk bottles” already? said Carrie McLaren in The Consumerist. How does play breast-feeding “speed up maternal urges” and promote teen pregnancy, as critics contend, while play bottle-feeding doesn’t? Perhaps they’d feel better if there were follow-up “Bebe Engorgement Es Muy Painful, and Bebe Leaky Boobs”?

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Bebe Gloton is “pretty tame,” said blogger Ann Althouse, and “little girls (and boys!)” who see their moms breast-feeding tend to pretend-nurse anyways, without the need for “additional technology.” No, “my main objection to the doll is that it is annoying.” Why is it necessary to give the doll an “irritating” sucking sound?