Sunday, December 14, 2014
Black dolls must cost the same as white doills
Target has been heavily criticized by customers after listing a black Barbie doll on its website for two times the price of the near-identical white alternative.
According to Buzzfeed, the glaring error was first brought to the attention of the retailer - and the public - by Cincinnati resident Warren Johnson, who noticed the bizarre price discrepancy when he logged onto the Target website to buy a Christmas present for his daughter.
After noticing the difference in cost between the Barbie Fashion Design Maker Doll, which was until recently priced at $23.49, and the Barbie Fashion Design Maker African-American Doll, which was priced at $49.99, the outraged 30-year-old contacted the store to ask why there was such a difference in price between the two toys.
The 30-year-old spoke to three different stores and while two told him the price difference was an error, a third admitted that the white doll was cheaper because it was more popular with customers.
An official spokesperson from Target's corporate office was quick to reject this theory however, but admitted that she could not give any real reason as to what could possibly make one doll so much more expensive than the other.
'[The Target saleswoman] was speechless and said she really didn’t have an explanation and she was apologetic, and she told us that a change would be made,' Mr Johnson told Buzzfeed. 'Then she gave us the doll for the price that the white doll was.'
Target later released a statement blaming the shocking price discrepancy on a 'system error'.
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7 comments:
Cost of changing an established manufacturing procedure is most likely is the result of a black Barbie doll being more expensive than a white one; it takes extra preparation to change colors in the painting process that has already been set up.
It's similar to a limited run on model railroad cars, changing road names or other details will cost the company money, so they must charge more. Obscure and less known railroad items are more expensive than standard commonly manufactured Union Pacific or Sante Fe items.
Obviously some people do not understand that about manufacturing. Therefore the obligatory groveling apologies must follow and the myth of automatic entrenched white racism continues.
Have all Barbie dolls painted a strong suntan color and then nobody has an excuse to vent their racial hangups.
Black boys seeing their sisters playing with white, blonde Barbies must be the reason most successful black men go for trophy white women as wives and girlfriends. Rather surprised this theory hasn't been advanced by the race hustlers, but it's only a matter of time now that this story has broken.
Perhaps the black dolls are more popular than the white dolls. Supply and demand, you know. Anonymous 3.07 is clearly correct, but you still can't make consumers pay more for a product than they consider reasonable. No matter how much the black Barbie cost to make, if people don't like it at that price, they won't buy it. On the other hand, if it cost no more than the white one to make, but was more popular, they could jack up the price.
Buy the off-white Barbie and some blackish shoe polish, and voilà, problem solved.
Why stop there how about a asian barbe a indian barbe and a green martian barbee
Remember the racial complaints when black barbies' weren't available? Guess who the racists are..
In Oz all we do is chuck a steak on our girlfriend's back and call her barbie.. ;)
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