TDS Time Machine | Happy Birthday Barbie

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 2 Belly up to the Barbie.

Speaker 2 Some of Hollywood's biggest stars turned out to honor a hunk of molded petroleum as Barbie turned 40, making her too old to play the girlfriend and too young to play the mother.

Speaker 2 Here's Brandy singing the Barbie marching song, Be Anything, with a chorus of future divorcees. She looks just like Moisha.

Speaker 2 So hit your heart and dream your dream. Be anything you wanna be anything.

Speaker 2 And here's Brandy talking.

Speaker 5 Barbie means so much to young little girls and she's so positive. She's very classy.
And I'm just happy to be here, you know, because that's the way, you know, I am.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 That's exactly right, Brandy, because class is all about telling people you're classy.

Speaker 2 Tell me more about this fabulous woman.

Speaker 6 You are the best. Happy anniversary.

Speaker 2 That was Barbie's role model, Dick Clark,

Speaker 2 who's also made entirely out of age-retardant space-age polymers.

Speaker 2 Oh, is that a microphone?

Speaker 5 I always loved Barbies. We never really had enough money to have a lot of Barbies, but

Speaker 5 we had a few.

Speaker 2 And though Rosie had only a few Barbies, every morning they were forced to sit on the couch and laugh at her jokes for a whole hour.

Speaker 2 According to Mattel, somewhere in the world, a Barbie doll is sold every two seconds. And every five seconds, a little girl starts to hate the way she looks.

Speaker 2 Tattooed Barbie outrages parents. Barbie exclaims, I was drunk.

Speaker 2 A tattooed version of the Barbie doll called Butterfly Art Barbie has come under fire from parents, prompting Mattel to stop production.

Speaker 2 The toy giant finally agreed the tattoo spoils the natural purity of Barbie's non-existent Mons and 48 double double D knockers.

Speaker 2 Mattel says.

Speaker 2 Mattel says it only included the tattoo at the last minute to cover Barbie's teen C-section scar.

Speaker 2 Though Butterfly Art Barbie is selling well, Mattel has also pushed back the release of Iron Butterfly Art Barbie.

Speaker 2 which comes in the back of a crumpled van at the bottom of the Malibu Dream Canyon.

Speaker 2 The dolls are part of the Generation Girl series of Barbies, which, according to a Mattel spokesman, are cool teenagers who go to an international high school in New York City, which of course means they will all date Nairobi Ken just to annoy their parents.

Speaker 7 Today is International Women's Day.

Speaker 7 And here's how the world's top feminist organization is celebrating.

Speaker 9 Mattel is also celebrating International Women's Day with seven new role models. The new Barbie lineup was inspired by the likeness of female leaders in STEM fields from around the world.

Speaker 9 The company hopes the role models, including former YouTube CEO Susan Wojski and UK space scientist Dr.

Speaker 9 Maggie Addern and Pocock, will inspire the next generation of girls to pursue their passions, despite women being underrepresented in STEM fields.

Speaker 2 This is so important.

Speaker 7 Kids learn so much from their toys they play with. You want them to have scientist dolls and CEO dolls that consider each other.

Speaker 7 For more on this story, we turn to Desi Leidick. Desi!

Speaker 7 How's your International Women's Day going? Well, thank you for asking.

Speaker 10 It started out so great. This morning, the random guy who usually yells, nice ass instead yelled I respect your nice ass

Speaker 10 and this is why we march

Speaker 10 so yeah I was feeling pretty good I mean at least until I saw this Barbie story but you don't like these brand new Barbies but they're so accomplished they got scientists and they got a YouTube CEO oh yeah equally great role models you could be a scientist who helps humanity or you could design a YouTube algorithm that says hey kids if you like Peppa Pig, you'll love QAnon.

Speaker 7 Okay, that's fair, but some of them are doctors and engineers,

Speaker 7 and one of them is a professor.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I know. They're all so successful.

Speaker 10 Those Barbies.

Speaker 4 F them all. F them.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's bad enough. Barbie was always hotter.
Now she's smarter than me, too.

Speaker 10 I want a doll that makes me feel bad about my body, not my mind.

Speaker 7 So you're saying we should get rid of these Barbies?

Speaker 10 Well no, I mean not necessarily, but why can't we also have some mediocre Barbies who don't make us feel pressured?

Speaker 10 Right? Not

Speaker 10 mediocrity.

Speaker 10 Not every Barbie has to be a girl boss. Let's have a Barbie who's a paralegal at a mid-sized law firm.

Speaker 10 Or one who works the lunch shift at a just salad.

Speaker 10 There is nothing wrong with Barbies who are just trying to make it through the day.

Speaker 6 But aren't Barbies supposed to be aspirational?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 10 No, Marlon, they're not.

Speaker 10 Give me a Barbie who's okay with letting 5,000 emails pile up in her inbox.

Speaker 10 The Barbie who spilled coffee on her shirt but knows she can still get another day out of it if she puts a blazer on top.

Speaker 10 The Barbie who spends her Friday nights in bed binge-watching Vanderpump rules dunking carrot sticks into a jar of peanut butter and letting her kids drive themselves to Taekwondo.

Speaker 10 For the love of God, stop judging me, Marlon.

Speaker 6 I wasn't, but those

Speaker 2 do feel very specific.

Speaker 10 You're specific.

Speaker 10 My point is, they don't all have to be rock stars. You think every Ken is a Nobel Prize-winning aeronautical engineer? No, he's just a man with a car and a pubic mound.
And we all accept him.

Speaker 10 That's what I want. The dream of every woman to be as successful as an average white man.

Speaker 7 That doesn't sound like women achieving their dreams.

Speaker 10 I'm sorry, are you mansplaining my dreams to me?

Speaker 10 On International Women's Day?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 10 What? No,

Speaker 8 I wouldn't dare. No, and kind of said,

Speaker 10 I feel like you wanted to.

Speaker 7 I swear I was not.

Speaker 11 I think that.

Speaker 7 Desi Lodek, please. Hey, buddy.

Speaker 2 Arabs get their own Barbie doll. Dreamhouse faces Mecca.

Speaker 2 If you happen to be in a Kmart in Cairo next year, be sure to look for Layla, an Arab version of the Barbie doll, who will be dressed in modest head-to-toe Islamic attire.

Speaker 2 A spokesman said that Layla will admire American Barbie for her strength and worldwide dominance, while Barbie will only hang out with Layla for the oil.

Speaker 2 Manufacturers insist the dolls are safe, but children, but clearly state in the warranty that all defects will be blamed on Israel.

Speaker 2 The Layla doll will be only 10 or 12 years old, still in little girls' underclothes, and too young for a boyfriend, which is important as she's already been betrothed to 68-year-old spice trader Ken Al-Ghabibi.

Speaker 2 Huh.

Speaker 2 Taiwanese man marries actual Barbie doll.

Speaker 2 Promises to have and to hold until death or errant space heater placement do they part.

Speaker 2 Believing it would appease the restless spirit of his dead wife, a Taiwanese man, Shang Shishum, married a real plastic and in no way living Barbie doll last Sunday.

Speaker 2 Religious scholars say according to the tenets of Buddhism, in this life Chang has been reincarnated as an idiot.

Speaker 2 The happy couple enjoyed a lengthy ceremony surrounded by relatives and embarrassed loved ones,

Speaker 2 many of whom were also present when the groom met his current bride at the factory where he made her.

Speaker 2 After the wedding, the happy couple drove off to the reception where they will dance as the wedding band plays the standard, I knew the bride when she used to be a lump of unmolded petroleum.

Speaker 2 The 46-year-old groom had been hoping to remarry ever since his first wife's death over 20 years ago, but Chang never met the right woman until Mattel released the embodiment of my first wife, Barbie.

Speaker 2 Welcome back to the daily show.

Speaker 7 With the global economy looking shaky, you may be wondering where you can safely invest your money.

Speaker 6 Well, Michael Costa has you covered with an opportunity you can't miss.

Speaker 6 When you think of successful markets that have thrived during the pandemic while so many others have perished, you think of Zoom, Amazon, sweatpants, and haunted dolls.

Speaker 6 That's right, haunted dolls are big right now.

Speaker 6 Now, I'm not usually an occult guy, but to survive in this economy, I'm willing to make a deal with the undead.

Speaker 6 But first, I had to find out more about the business, and who better to teach me than Kat Blowers, the number one seller of haunted dolls on eBay.

Speaker 13 Be scared of demons, be scared of negative energy. But other than that, if you're interested, you should jump in with both feet.

Speaker 6 You are literally in the business of ghosting people. When did you notice that the haunted doll business was skyrocketing and that you are basically the Jeff Bezos of Haunted Dolls?

Speaker 13 I started in 2014 and there was only a few shops. Now there's probably 50, 60 shops for haunted dolls.

Speaker 6 How many dolls would you say you've sold in the last year?

Speaker 13 Probably a thousand.

Speaker 6 There's money in this?

Speaker 13 There is. I've seen a haunted doll go for $4,000.

Speaker 12 Woo!

Speaker 6 Okay, now Costa's into it. But my big question, aside from how can I hide $4,000 of doll sales from the IRS, is what made a haunted doll a haunted doll?

Speaker 6 According to haunted doll sellers, any doll that was inhabited by the soul of a dead person was primed for selling. But what made one haunting more expensive than another?

Speaker 6 When you say haunted, for me that sounds scary. You're also saying that there's a a positive haunting?

Speaker 13 Absolutely, and I try to keep most of my stuff on the positive side to the bottom.

Speaker 12 Oh, you mean like

Speaker 6 the baby with its legs ripped off?

Speaker 13 Actually, that one's not that positive.

Speaker 6 Right. What if it's like a really evil spirit?

Speaker 13 I actually do charge a little bit more. I don't want the little young kids to be able to afford it.

Speaker 6 You can sell a human soul on eBay.

Speaker 13 There was a ban.

Speaker 6 Who was selling too many human souls?

Speaker 13 You have to have a disclaimer if a ghost causes you to murder your wife.

Speaker 6 Isn't capitalism fascinating?

Speaker 14 It can be.

Speaker 13 That's about 25% of the business, and people send them to me. And right now, I have a two and a half year waiting list for evaluations.

Speaker 13 Yeah. What? Write down everything you know about the doll so that when I open the box, I know what I'm dealing with.
And I'll talk to you in two and a half years.

Speaker 13 The rest of the business is people contacting me looking for a haunted doll. Are you looking for a little kid? Are you looking for something that's going to challenge you?

Speaker 13 Are you looking for something that's going to scare your neighbors? There's spirits that will motivate you to do work. There's spirits that'll attract money to your house.

Speaker 13 There's spirits that will attract love.

Speaker 11 Wow.

Speaker 6 Clearly, Catherine was selling these haunted little hotcakes, but who are the everyday folks buying these haunted dolls?

Speaker 12 Hi. Oh, I know.

Speaker 12 It's you. I know you.
Hey.

Speaker 6 Yep, the Stormy Daniels. Stormy's doll, Susan, was purchased in 2011 and is said to be cursed with a a uniquely malevolent spirit.

Speaker 1 We believe Susan belonged to a little girl who died in 1955, and it definitely had something to do with a stomach issue.

Speaker 6 Before we even started shooting, the producer on Set Here wanted to touch her, and you said, don't do that, you'll shit your pants.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 1 Three people that I slept with in a row, she attacked. They had stomach problems and back issues pretty much immediately.
She's more mischievous than malicious. I've never felt like I was in danger.

Speaker 6 What has Susan added to your life?

Speaker 1 She adds protection when you go into these places that could be dangerous.

Speaker 11 Okay, but is Susan really worth that much?

Speaker 1 I have been offered $7,500 for her once and $10,000 for her once, but she is not for sale. She has her own TV show.
She's on VH1's The Real Life.

Speaker 1 Anyone who follows her Instagram will know this little plastic bitch has been on yachts and Ferraris.

Speaker 6 Is that her handle, this little plastic bitch?

Speaker 12 It should be.

Speaker 6 Would you say she's living her best afterlife?

Speaker 1 She is definitely living her best afterlife.

Speaker 6 So I went back to Cat to learn about the highly scientific analysis process used to identify a haunted doll.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 12 bells.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 6 After studying the extensive tools needed and the strict procedure... What if the UPS guy rings the doorbell?

Speaker 12 That screws it up.

Speaker 6 I knew if I was serious about getting into the business of haunted dolls, the next step had to be trying out the haunted product to see what all the fuss is about.

Speaker 13 Her name's Jennifer. She is about seven or eight years old, and we think she was murdered.

Speaker 6 Is it safe to say that she was killed by a white man?

Speaker 12 Yes. Probably.
Absolutely.

Speaker 6 What would Jennifer cost for someone?

Speaker 13 60, 70 bucks.

Speaker 6 60, 70 bucks. Okay.
All right, Jennifer. Sorry you got murdered.

Speaker 6 So I left with my free trial named Jennifer and I took a video diary to record my feedback.

Speaker 6 Hey, so day one with Jennifer.

Speaker 2 I don't know if I really get it yet.

Speaker 14 Only thing I can report, I have had some violent dreams. There was a river of blood and there was stabbing, but still better than what I was dreaming about before, which was the state of this country.

Speaker 14 So I think I'm starting to get it a little bit. Did you make this for me? I don't know if she's following me

Speaker 14 or if I just bring her everywhere.

Speaker 6 I can't do this with you watching.

Speaker 11 Thank you.

Speaker 12 The soul.

Speaker 14 of this doll has excellent comedic timing. It's just great having someone around who laughs at my jokes.

Speaker 14 She is a haunted doll, and I know what I'm saying, and it sounds crazy, but it's just, it's, it's wonderful.

Speaker 2 Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
I'm going to kill you.

Speaker 12 Just kidding.

Speaker 14 The trial's over, and I can't get into this business. Sending Jennifer back to Catherine is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

Speaker 14 Jennifer,

Speaker 14 you gotta go.

Speaker 6 Get in the box.

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