Welcome to the doll outhouse, Kicking up a profit

last updated 11 January 2015

GOOD DAY FOR: Ken the Plumber, as Mattel has augmented its line of Barbies and other dolls with a Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Gotta Go Doll, which triggers “potty waste” to appear when she sits on a toy toilet. The Baby Alive Learns to Potty doll is even more realistic—you feed her the included “green beans” and “bananas” and the doll passes them out the other end. Both dolls are on track to be big hits this Christmas season, to the dismay of child-development experts. (The Washington Post)

BAD DAY FOR: Profiting from your fame, as the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi remains in jail while the Turkish producer of the shoes he famously threw at President Bush has hired 100 extra workers to meet the surge in demand—Istanbul-based Ramazan Baydan plans to rename his Model 271 “the Bush shoe” or “Bye-Bye Bush.” Baydan’s company has received 300,000 orders for the shoe—four times its normal annual orders—since Zaidi’s shoe toss; 120,000 of the orders are from the U.S. (The Guardian)