[566] in Humor
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark A. Herschberg)
Mon Nov 28 11:38:48 1994
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From: "Bill Tamashunas" <tamash@alk.com>
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Subject: Fwd: Rollerblade Barbie Bursts Into Flames
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From: "Douglas Udoff" <DUDOFF@us.oracle.com>
To: tmkent@aol.com, daveski@vnet.ibm.com, janine_udoff@ml.com
Subject: Fwd: Rollerblade Barbie Bursts Into Flames
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Doug Udoff
Managing Principal
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Received: 31 Oct 1994 10:07:22 Sent: 31 Oct 1994 10:04:15
From:"Griffith, Terry" <griffith@cclink.tfn.com>
To: dudoff@us.oracle.com,v137p7cn@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: Rollerblade Barbie Bursts Into Flames
Reply-to: griffith@cclink.tfn.com
>>> Blading Barbie Sparks Up Hell On Wheels
>>> by Dave Barry
>>>
>>> Copied from Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, Sunday, July 17, 1994
>>>
>>> As executive director of the Bureau of Consumer Alarm, I am
>>> always on the alert for news stories that involve two key elements:
>>>
>>> 1. Fire
>>> 2. Barbie
>>>
>>> So I was very interested when alert reader Michael Robinson sent
>>> me a column titled "Ask Jack Sunn" from the Dec. 13, 1993, issue of
>>> the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger. Here's an excerpt from a
>>> consumer's letter to this column, which I am not making up:
>>>
>>> "Last year, my two daughters received presents of two Rollerblade Barbie
>>> dolls by Mattel. On March 8, my 8-year-old daughter was playing beauty
>>> shop with her 4-year-old brother. After spraying him with hair spray, the
>>> children began to play with the boot to Rollerblade Barbie. My little girl
>>> innocently ran the skate across her brother's bottom, which immediately
>>> ignited his clothes."
>>>
>>> The letter adds that "There are no warnings concerning fire on these
>>> toys ... I feel the need to warn potential buyers of their danger."
>>>
>>> In his response, Jack Sunn says, cryptically, that "Mattel does not
>>> manufacture Rollerblade Barbie any more." He does not address the
>>> critical question that the consumer's letter raised in my mind, as I'm
>>> sure it did yours, namely: Huh?
>>>
>>> I realized that the only way to answer this question was to conduct a
>>> scientific experiment. As you may recall, last year, in response to a
>>> news item concerning a kitchen fire in Ohio, I did an experiment proving
>>> that if you put a Kellogg's strawberry Pop-Tart in a toaster and hold the
>>> toaster lever down for five minutes and 50 seconds, the Pop-Tart will turn
>>> into a snack-pastry blowtorch, shooting flames up to 30 inches high. Also
>>> your toaster will be ruined.
>>>
>>> The problem was that I did not have a Rollerblade Barbie. My son happens
>>> to be a boy, and we never went through the Barbie phase. We went through
>>> the Masters of the Universe phase. For two years our household was the
>>> scene of a fierce, unceasing battle between armies of good and evil action
>>> figures. They were everywhere. You'd open up the salad crisper, and there
>>> would be He-Man and Skeletor, striking each other with carrots. So at the
>>> end of a recent column, I printed a note appealing for a Rollerblade Bar
>>> bie. I got two immediately; one from Renee Simmons of Clinton, Iowa, and
>>> one from Randy Langhenry of Gainesville, Ga., who said it belonged to his
>>> 6-year-old daughter, Greta. ("It would help me if you could get Barbie
>>> back to north Georgia before Greta notices she's gone," Randy wrote.)
>>>
>>> Rollerblade Barbie is basically a standard Barbie, which is to say, she
>>> represents the feminine beauty ideal, if your concept of a beautiful
>>> female is one who is six feet, nine inches tall and weighs 52 pounds (37
>>> of which are in the bust area) and has a rigidly perky smile and eyeballs
>>> the size of beer coasters and a one-molecule nose and enough hair to clog
>>> the Lincoln Tunnel.
>>>
>>> But what makes this Barbie special is that she's wearing two little yellow
>>> Rollerblade booties, each of which has a wheel similar to the kind found
>>> in cigarette lighters, so that when you roll Barbie along, her booties
>>> shoot out sparks. This seems like an alarming thing for Rollerblades to
>>> do, but Barbie, staring perkily ahead, does not seem to notice.
>>>
>>> To ensure high standards of scientific accuracy, I conducted the
>>> experiment in my driveway. Aside from Rollerblade Barbie, my materials
>>> consisted of several brands of hair spray and -- this was a painful
>>> sacrifice -- a set of my veteran underwear (estimated year of purchase:
>>> 1968). I spread the underwear on the driveway, then sprayed it with hair
>>> spray, then made Rollerblade Barbie skate across it, sparking her booties.
>>> I found that if you use the right brand of hair spray -- I got excellent
>>> results with Rave -- Rollerblade Barbie does indeed cause the underwear to
>>> burst dramatically into flame.
>>>
>>> (While I was doing this, a neighbor walked up, and I just want to say that
>>> if you think it's easy to explain why you're squatting in your driveway,
>>> in front of a set of burning underwear, surrounded by hair spray bottles,
>>> holding a Barbie doll in your hand, then you are mistaken.)
>>>
>>> At this point, the only remaining scientific question -- I'm sure this has
>>> occurred to you -- was: Could Rollerblade Barbie set fire to a Kellog's
>>> strawberry Pop-Tart? The answer turns out to be yes, but you have to be
>>> in the act of hair-spraying the Pop-Tart when Barbie Rollerblades over it,
>>> so you get a blowtorch effect that could very easily set fire to Barbie's
>>> hair, not to mention your own personal self. Plus you get tart filling in
>>> the booties. So we can see why Mattel ceased manufacturing Rollerblade
>>> Barbie. I imagine that whichever toy designer dreamed up this exciting
>>> concept has been transferred to Mattel's coveted Bosnia plant. But what
>>> should be done about all the Rollerblade Barbies that are already in
>>> circulation? I believe that the only solution is for all concerned
>>> consumers to demand that our congress- humans pass a federal law requiring
>>> that all underwear, snack pastries and other household objects carry a
>>> prominent label stating:
>>>
>>> "WARNING! DO NOT SPRAY HAIR SPRAY ON THIS OBJECT
>>>
>>> AND SKATE ROLLERBLADE BARBIE OVER IT!"
>>>
>>> But that is not enough. We also need to appropriate millions of dollars
>>> for a massive federal effort to undo the damage that has been done so far.
>>> I'm talking about scraping this crud off my driveway.
>>>
>>> Also, the taxpayers owe Greta a new Barbie.
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Bill Tamashunas tamash@alk.com
ALK Associates, Inc. 609.252.8157 - Voice
1000 Herrontown Rd. 609.683-0290 - Fax
Princeton, NJ 08540
"When all is said and done, more is said than done"
- Anonymous
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