Stuff You Should Know - How Barbie Doll Works

Episode Date: December 21, 2012

In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore the history, cultural impact and feminist ire raised by the Barbie doll. The boys are joined by Gordon Javna, the founder of the Bathroom Readers' Institute and publisher of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We have to talk about our TV show. That's right. We have a television show that's coming out on our beloved science channel. January 19th at 10 p.m. follows the premiere of Idiot Abroad. Season three.

Yep, and after Idiot Abroad at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time will be the world debut of Stuff You Should Know, the TV show. Not one new episode, but two new episodes back-to-back. 10 o'clock and 10.30. That's right. Saturday night, January 19th. It's going to be pretty neat. What are we doing? What are the people going to see? Are they going to see a game show which we've been asked? Are they going to see a reality show which we've been asked? No, Josh. They are seeing a scripted TV show that features the real us playing ourselves along with actors on a set that we recreated of our office. It's basically an office comedy about our lives as podcasters featuring the

podcasting itself and real knowledge and factual stuff. We think it's a good combination of fun and humor and facts, and we think you'll like it. Yeah, we hope you'll like it. That's January 19th, Saturday, 10 p.m., the world premiere, and don't forget to check out Idiot Abroad season three. Absolutely. The premiere is before that. Very funny show. And for those of you clamoring that you don't have TV or cable, you, if you have a computer device, can watch this on iTunes now. You're going to be able to

purchase these. I believe the day after each episode is released. Go to iTunes, buy it for $1.99, and watch it on your laptop. Nice. And Science Channel is so cool. They are making the first episode available for free. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. On iTunes just to get you hooked. Yeah. So we appreciate the support. And now on with the episode, sir. Yes. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that's stuff you should know. Two of us together. The anatomically correct doll models version.

I call myself a doll model once in a while, and I hear a little perk. Yeah. You know, you're looking very kin like these days. Sure. Hey, man. Not magic earring kin. No. We'll get to that. I like shave kin. Shave kin, sure. So I know you know this, but I'll tell you again, back when I was a little pup, I had this series of books that were very, very significant in my life. Yeah. The Uncle John's bathroom reader. Yeah. Now we get one for Christmas every year, and I would like go through it in the first hour I had it. My legs would be numb. How old were you in the bathroom when you first got these? I think I started when I was about 12.

Yeah. I love that your parents knew that you were just a sponge for information even at that age. Yeah. I don't remember how I first came about it, but I think somebody got it for me, and they were blown away at how much I liked it. Yeah. And it really helped shape me in many, many ways. Sure. The way I understand things, the way I look at things like just general knowledge I've had, some right, some wrong, but like it's been a big deal. Yeah. What you do in the bathroom? We're reading. Yeah. So this episode is kind of special to me because all this material, we're doing how Barbie doll works. Yeah. Almost all this material is from Uncle John's bathroom reader. They got in touch with us and gave us everything they have on Barbie, and we compiled

it into this podcast. And we actually have a special guest later, the founder of the bathroom reader Institute, Gordon Javna is going to be joining us on this to talk about Barbie too. Very excited. And they're also kind enough to give us hats and I think shirts as well, right? Yeah, because they listened to us. Yeah. And we found out they listened. I was like, you are kidding. Like the circle of life is complete. Like we hear from Mad Magazine, Archie Comics. Damn interesting. Damn interesting. Have we heard from crack yet? No. We love them. They're the one people, the one people, the one group out there that I would like to contact us. That's just the one. Just them and like Barry Manlow. I've been holding that for Obama. I know

he listens to him, but can Obama just send us an email. Well, yeah, you know, I remember when they released what was the contents of his iPod. Yeah, one year. And we were both like, Oh, my God, are we on it? We got it. Of course we're not on it now. Still. All right. Oh, and before we get started, I want to give a shout out to one of our horror fiction contest entrance. Oh, remember, we said, if you publish something, let us know and we'll tell everybody. Sure. Jay McMurray submitted his story, The Mind Reader. It was very good. Yeah, that was a good one. And he's got it up on amazon.com and you can search Jay McMurray, M-C-M-U-R-R-Y and The Mind Reader and it will bring it up for you. He's self published, so it's pretty awesome. Awesome. So

way to go Jay. Thanks for letting us know. So Barbie. Yes, it all started with a lady named Ruth Mariana who eventually became Ruth Handler. Yeah. She grew up, but I guess kind of poor in Denver, Colorado. Yeah. Well, her mom was ill and I have the feeling that it was just her mom. Yeah. So she ended up having to go live with her sister at a fairly young age. Yeah. And at a young age as well, met her husband to be Elliot and they moved to California as New Leo Edds did in the 1930s. Yeah. With you know, prosperous land out there opportunity and they had a very long lasting marriage and business partnership. 63 years. Pretty great. It is great. Elliot turned out to have a knack for creating giftware specifically to start picture frames, wooden picture frames. Yeah.

And Ruth turned out to have a knack for marketing and merchandising them. That's right. And they together formed Mattel, which sounds familiar, I imagine. Yeah. Well, with Harold Madsen. Uh-huh. That's where the mat came from. Nice. And the L was Elliot. Very nice. Mattel. That's nice, Chuck. And they also had a couple of kids named Barbie and Ken. Yeah. There you have it. We should just end it right there. The end. That's how Barbie works. That's pretty cool though. It's a nice little factoid. Well, I think one of the things that I think is interesting about Barbie is that the Barbie doll was directly inspired by Barbie handler, Ruth's daughter. Yeah. Barbie used to play with Barbie, the real girl used to play with dolls. She had like her little baby dolls and she

had, you know, little girl dolls or whatever because that's all that was available. Sure. But she also played with paper dolls and these paper dolls were kind of fashion dolls. So they were older, mature women and they had different outfits and apparently Barbie was just crazy for them. So Ruth went to her colleagues at Mattel and said, we need to come up with a three-dimensional doll that you can change outfits. It's going to be a huge hit. And all the male suits poo-pooed it. They said, boo, boo, sit down. Give me some coffee, lady. Exactly. And she was like, all right, well, fine. I'll see you all in hell. Yeah. Well, they did poo-poo it for a legitimate reason though. They said it was not possible to manufacture it. Right. I don't think it was just poo-pooing her

idea. Although there was probably some of that mixed in. Sure. Luckily, Europe called and the handlers went on a European vacation in I think 1956. And while they were in Lucerne, Switzerland, they were in some toy shop, I guess, that happened to be selling a German doll called a Lily doll. And Lily was based on a, I guess you could call it a body comic strip. And this doll that was based on the strip was meant for men as maybe like as a host's gift for a stag party or something like that. I get the impression you got them in shops of ill-repute at the time. Yeah. Did you look up Lily? Uh-huh. Looks like Barbie. Looks like Marlene Dietrich. They kind of ripped it off. Yeah. Although I shouldn't say that because I might get sued.

Well, and we should also say, as you'll find out why in the not too distant future, that every time we say Barbie, there is an implied registered trademark symbol following it. That's right. All rights to Mattel. We claim zero rights or copy rights on Barbie or her products. Right. So Lily was a prototype and you know, she was a grown-up lady that you could change the clothes on. And she was like, you know what, this is what we've been wanting. This is what I've been waiting for. It's possible to manufacture these. And I want to make Barbies at Mattel because a woman has choices and the fact that you can change her clothes proves it. Right. It took a little convincing, but she got Mattel, the other guys at Mattel, on board.

Well, yeah. They resisted because of the large breasts on the doll. Yeah. They basically said, no mom's going to buy a doll with breasts for her daughter. Remember, there is nothing like this out there at the time, at least in America. And even in Europe, the one doll that was like this that Barbie was based on was based on a sexy comic strip. Yeah, exactly. So it wasn't for little girls. So this is a really revolutionary idea for a handler to be like, no, no, they'll get past it. Like this is what we need to do. Got Mattel on board and debuted this thing at the Toy Fair in New York City in 1959. Yeah. And a zebra striped bathing suit. Yes. Very alluring, I guess. And her eyes were cast to

the side. She can never meet your gaze, which as a sidebar, unless you turn it. No, like it'll never meet your gaze. The only way for the eyes moved. No, the only way for eyes in a painting or on a doll to meet you is for them to already be painted looking ahead. If they're painted looking to the side, they'll never meet you. Well, unless you turn the doll to the side. I'm telling you, you try it. You try it. You told the story about the painting. I still disagree. So in the Shinto religion, anything that has eyes, including a doll, can capture your spirit. So in Japan, a lot of dolls are made with sideways looks. So you can't look them in the eye. And every year, and you keep your spirit at the right at the Meiji Shrine in Japan, they have a doll burning

celebration where they burn unused and unwanted dolls so that they can't get anybody. That's an environmental nightmare. So Barbie debuts in 1959, right? Yes. She goes to Sears because they sold tons of Mattel products at the time. Sears said, no, this thing is too sexy. No one's going to buy them. It's too sexy. So Mattel turned out to be smarty pants, though, because five years later, Barbie was a million dollar doll, I guess, because of all the internet orders that they were getting. Well, the little kids find some stores said, yes, okay, we'll take them and little kids sold them. In that first year, Chuck, they sold 350,000 of these things. And they were selling them for three bucks a piece, which I looked as 2283 in 2011 dollars.

So there was a substantial amount of sales for the first year. So Ruth Handler was proven right pretty much out of the gate. Yes, that is true. The cool end of Ruth's story, actually not so cool because she died of cancer, but she eventually got breast cancer. And when she was unable to find a breast prosthesis that she thought was was good enough, she said, you know what, I'm going to make my own and I'm going to form a company and I'm going to call it nearly me. And they manufacture breast prosthesis for cancer survivors. Yeah, pretty cool. She sadly lost her battle, but I think she was like in her late 80s or mid 80s. And even after the Handlers were basically forced out of Mattel after some questionable earnings reports in the late 70s, early 80s,

she's still regarded like this Titan of the toy industry, a legend of this woman who like helped build Mattel from scratch and like made it what it is today. Yeah. And I think Elliott just passed away last year. So he lived in his 90s. That's great. So we have a few stats here. Yeah. A new Barbie doll today sells approximately every three seconds. See, just sold one. One, another just sold one. Yeah. It is a $1.5 billion business for Mattel. And the average girl from three to six has 12 of these. That is mind boggling. A number one Barbie from 1959 costs you about 27 grand these days. Yeah. And what else? The best selling Barbie of all time. Oh, yeah. Was the 1992 totally hair Barbie who had hair from head to toe. Yeah. It strikes me

strange that that's the best selling Barbie of all time. I looked it up. It's for guys like us, you look at this thing and say, wow, what a redneck doll. Like has anyone been into the Crystal Gale look since the 70s? Yeah. But I think little girls enjoyed like styling the hair. All that hair. And all the hair that you could do all these interesting things with. So Barbie herself, if you want to know a little bit of a backstory, if anyone ever asks you, Barbie's full name. Barbie the doll. Yes. Not the daughter. We're no longer talking about the daughter. No. We're talking about Barbie the doll in this weird fake history in this strange. It's a little weird. Yeah. That's why we went in and then we're coming back out for a second.

But Barbie's real name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, apparently, which is my aunt's name, not her middle name, but her name is Barbie Roberts. Oh, really? And she hails from not my aunt, but the Barbie doll hails from Willows, Wisconsin. Yeah. Yeah. And she has friends specifically and most notably, Ken Sean Carson, who was introduced in 1961. They're both Pisces, I guess. Like me. I think so. And they're both early March. Well, I'm mid March. I know the cutoff is sometime in March, though, so. But they were both born in March. Okay. We'll call them Pisces. And Barbie has some relatives. Her best friend is Midge, by the way, who's been introduced a couple of times pregnant and really cause controversy both times. Yeah. One time with an

actual baby in the belly that you can take out in the womb. Yeah. That was, uh, it's looked upon and cracked magazine as one of the horrific toys in history. I think it was necessary and educational. All right. What was surprising to me was that she was pregnant and it caused the second time it caused waves as recently as like 2002. Oh, really? 2002 or 2006. It was fairly recent. It seems the world still has hangups about pregnancy for some reason. Well, it's probably single woman pregnancy. Probably not just the fact that she was pregnant. Oh, I don't think anyone has any problems with pregnancy. Um, you've also heard of Skipper. Yeah. She was a little sister. She was the little sister debuted in 1975. Then there's Stacy Todd and

Chelsea who are named after the Handler's grandchildren. Yep. Um, and then about Ken, Ken. He's gone through some transitions over the years. It's Malibu Ken, the laid back dude. Sure. Magic ear and Ken who we'll talk about a little more in depth. Shall we introduce in 1993 embraced by the gay community. And, um, have you seen pictures? Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's got a, um, not look up ear and earring magic. Ken, not this person I did. Uh, see through kind of a sheer purple tank, mesh, mesh and sleeveless. There's a matching purple jacket and a medallion. Doesn't he have like a wrist like corsage or something too? I didn't see that part. He looked like a gay raver. Yeah, we can say that. I mean, like dead on a gay raver. I don't want to offend

any ravers out there. And apparently the whole, um, the, the, the fact that the gay community bought a large portion of these things was a big surprise to Mattel. And they're like, wait, we didn't mean that. So they took it off the shelves. Well, they're pretty stupid. You know, registered trademark, registered trademark. They were making big sales. Uh, there had long been a joking whispers about Ken sexuality in pop culture. So when they made this one, I think people thought, all right, they're finally giving us like the real Ken and then put them to yank it back off the shelves. It's like, come on. Yeah. Well, that's a kind of a thread you'll see throughout is that Mattel is very protective of Barbie's image. Oh, yes.

And by proxy, Ken's image as well. That's right. Um, and apparently they don't think Ken's gay. Um, Ken and Barbie broke up once very famously in 2004. Yeah. And they got, well, after Blaine, the Australian surfer showed up, they just happened to break up then. But of course, like all noted lovers in history, they got back together in Valentine's on Valentine's Day, 2011. Right. And, uh, apparently Barbie was even on match.com for a little while and Ken designed a cupcake for her at Magnolia Bakery and posted billboards asking for Barbie's hand again. And it worked. They got together. Of course, she's never been married again. Never. No, they got back together in Valentine's Day, 2011. That's right. What about her jobs? Barbie's effect told them.

She, uh, has done a lot of things. Fashion model, astronaut, 130 careers total. Yep. Hot dog, stand owner. She's been a cop, a paleontologist. McDonald's franchisee. Was she a franchisee? Because I saw the one where she worked in the drive-thru. It depends. Like if you really start thinking about Barbie, she owned the place. Okay. But that's a big difference, you know, of the image you're sending out. Like, is she a business owner or she's slinging fries? Well, she's also owned like tons of boutiques. Sure. Again, she owned that hot dog stand. Like pretty much everything she works at, she's owned. I, I, that was the impression I had. Racecar driver, aerobics instructor. She owned aerobics. Right. While she did it. She had a

band Barbie and the Rockers that formed in 1986. That's right. I've not heard any songs, but I should go look that up. And then animals. She's had more than 50 pets. First of which was a horse named Dancer. She said 21 dogs, 12 horses, three ponies, six cats a parrot, a champ, a panda, a lion cub, a giraffe, and a zebra. And that is it for the fake history of Barbie. Yeah. Because if there's one thing about Barbie, it's that she collides with society both in academic circles and pop culture. Like you said, in every aspect, Barbie has her little plastic toes dipped in some part of our society at large for tiny little plastic toes. And probably the, the group that she's run afoul of the most are feminists. Right. Yeah. And this article makes a great point.

Like feminism and Barbie and Barbie co-evolved right about the same time in the 19 early 1960s. Yeah. Is when these things were going on. Yeah. Barbie came out in 1959. Betty Frieden published the feminist mystique in 1963, right? So they're, they're just right there head to head. Intertwined. Add each other's throats for pretty much the whole time. Yeah. Because a feminist will point out Barbie is her figure is ridiculous. She's wealthy. She's vapid. She's materialistic. Girl shouldn't even be playing with this thing because it sends all the wrong messages. Possibly dangerous messages. And there are times when Mattel's kind of made the point for feminists or just any critic of Barbie specifically 1992 teen talk Barbie. Yeah. I feel bad for them sometimes

with the stuff because they've made some terrible mistakes along the way. I know, but you get, I don't know. You just, I picture like an out of touch boardroom and they're trying to do the right thing. Sure. And it just blows up in their face over and over. So what? Teen talk Barbie? Yeah. They recorded this. Barbie could talk back to you thanks to a computer microchip and it would say four phrases and they had 270 phrases total and each doll got four at random. I love shopping. Let's have a pizza party or then 1% of dolls math class is tough, which is a pretty high percentage for just one thing. So like the worst thing that teen talk Barbie could have said ended up in the most dolls. Yeah. And of course, that perpetuated the girls are bad at math thing and the American

Association of University women said, we don't like perpetuating these stereotypes. Mattel said, fine, you know what, we'll pull these and if you got one of these, I don't like math dolls. You can send it in and get another one, but it was kind of too late. And then the best thing in history happened. Yeah. The Barbie liberation organization struck. They bought hundreds of teen talk Barbies and they also apparently bought hundreds of talking Duke G. I. Joe action figures and they switched the microchips out in them. So awesome. And then they took them back. Yeah. So a lot of little girls got Barbies that said things like vengeance is mine. And a lot of little boys got G. I. Joe's that said things like, let's plan our dream wedding. Yeah, that's pretty great. And there's

actually a really excellent version of this saga that's told in a Simpsons episode, Lisa versus Malibu Stacy. I remember that all this background based on Ruth Handler and Mattel Barbie and this Barbie liberation organization. I'm glad you mentioned that. I've forgotten all about that. That is such a good episode. Lisa Lionheart. So Mattel and Ruth have always shot back or countered maybe more politely. They're not shrinking violets when the feminists are on them. No, they say, you know what? Barbie was created by women. Barbie has always had jobs, sometimes male traditional male jobs. Yeah, they say she breaks the plastic ceiling. Yeah, like she was a day to night CEO Barbie Barbie for president 1992 astronaut Barbie. And they basically said,

you know what? She's never been married. She never had kids. Yeah, Barbie is a feminist. Right. Although I bet a lot of feminists would argue back and they have been for years. Well, yeah, but some feminists also actually grudgingly support Barbie as a champion of women's rights. There's this one article I read by by Deb Moore Henneke. It's called Rethinking Barbie. Yeah. And she points out that quote Ken dolls come in several outfits, but really he's just there. Barbie happens to want to go on a date. She does not stand around waiting for Ken to show up. Or she needs someone to go shopping with her to help her pick out her friends for that. And the next sentence she basically said like she goes shopping with her friends. She basically does

whatever she wants, you know? So she's no, she's no lackey for Ken. Sure. And they'll also point out that, you know what? Before we came along, it was just like baby dolls. And all it said was, here, you can only be a mother to a child. Right. Or have a little imaginary best friend, little girl doll. Right. There were no adult dolls that had adult jobs and think like adult jobs. But yeah. And even from the outset, I mean, Ruth Handler created Barbie with the idea that little girls could use this older doll to imagine themselves in their life and maybe hopefully make a better path for themselves. And that's kind of been a point of Barbie all along. And there's actually, there was this one study out of Washington and Lee in 2010 that supported that,

that found that when groups of little girls were shown a Barbie doll, getting into the the outfit of like a male dominated occupation like firefighter. Yeah. They tended to report that they could grow up to be a firefighter too. Sure. So I mean, there is support for that. Yeah. Very much. But still, there's a lot of easy shots that one can take in Mattel is, you know, basically making Barbie a sexualized doll. Yeah. But I mean, since the very beginning till yesterday, this has been going on. And it's just one of those lifelong battles. Mattel is never going to back down. Right. And I'm sure the feminist probably won't either. Studies aside, everyone has their opinion on Barbie. Yeah. And I think that's a really good

point about Barbie. I feel like she is a giant mirror for society. Everything that's wrong with it, everything that's right with it, depending on how you look at Barbie and on a much more on a much more microcosmic level, depending on how an individual little girl plays with Barbie. Sure. She can be a, you know, a tool for aspiration or something that teaches the girl all the wrong things. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. All right. So we should talk about Barbie and race because Mattel has also like made some missteps over the years when it comes to this. Fair to cringe. Yeah. Cringe worthy episode coming up in 1967. They conceived of a black friend for Barbie and they called her colored Francie. I know. I'm not sure how well that went

over. It's hard to tell now because it sounds so ridiculous, but I don't know how it was received at the time. I couldn't find anything on that. Apparently not that great because colored Francie is not around any longer. Well, their follow-up wasn't that much better. Now, in 1980, they came out with black Barbie. Yeah. That's what they called it. Yep. Black Barbie. Black Barbie. Ken came out two years later, African American Ken. Sonsational Malibu Ken in 1982 was black. And the problem was until 2009, until three years ago. One of the problems. Yeah. One of the problems, aside from the naming conventions, is that they still use the quote, unquote white dolls and just made the skin tone darker. Yeah. Dark hair. Yeah. And they didn't change any other aspect

of the doll until three years ago when they finally made African American Barbies Cara, Grace, and Trichelle. And they had designs apparently to replicate features of real African American women. Right. Finally. And have you seen these dolls? I have. Yeah. They're great. One of them looks sort of like Beyonce. That one that 2010 Washington Lee study that we mentioned, that author also started to wonder like, how does what Barbie doesn't, how does what Barbie isn't doing affecting little girls as well? Yeah. So the point she made was if a young African American girl goes into a store and like, there's not a black president Barbie. Right. What does that tell her? Sure. But there's just the white president Barbie. Right. Yeah. It's a good point.

Again, prepare for cringing because like you said, apparently Mattel's boardroom exists in a cultural vacuum. I think so. In 1996, they got a ring ending from Nabisco who said, hey, we need to move some Oreos. So why don't you guys make an Oreo themed Barbie? And they said, sure, no problem. We should point out they've done a lot of deals with companies over the years. Yeah. So this wasn't anything bigger, newer, more worthy. Cook Barbie, Pepsi Barbie, NASCAR Barbie seems like anytime they have a new, you know, I mean, I have a Barbie. Do you really? No. Josh Barbie. Oh, I thought you made your own one. No, no, there's a, yeah, there's a podcast or Barbie. Yeah. So they contracted with Nabisco and they came out with

an Oreo themed Barbie and all was fine. They got a few complaints saying like this promotes junk food. Sure. But nothing big, no biggie. It's the usual stuff. And then they released a black version of Oreo Barbie. Yes. And that caused some controversy because like you said, apparently their boardroom is in a vacuum. And they did not realize that that is a racial epithet leveled by black people against other black people. They feel like they're being too, quote, unquote, white. So they're dark on the outside, white in the middle, Oreos. And Mattel wasn't aware of this. No. And they released an African American Barbie that said Oreo all over. Yeah. On the shirt and like in the purse. And they are now a collector's item,

of course, because they quickly were yanked from the shelves. And as Cracked.com put it, they quote, picked the one cookie in the universe that could ever be construed as offensive ever. Take the one cookie. Yeah. She could have been the Nutterbutter Barbie. No problems. Yeah, you're right. Or Cracked, right? So Mattel also as there's a lot of stuff that they do, right? Like in that case, they didn't mean to offend anybody. It was just a horrible mistake. Yeah. And, you know, they released an African American Barbie and they released a white Barbie, right? They do the same with multi ethnic Barbies from around the world. They've been releasing them forever. And like it's great because, you know, oh, there's a place called Spain. Yeah. A

little girl says like that kind of thing. It's good for that. But at the same time, it's like the clothes they dress them up in are beyond stereotypical. Yeah. Native American Barbie. The Dutch Barbie looks like the Swiss Miss girl. Yeah. As a matter of fact, it probably is. And then Vintage Ken from Mexico in 1964. He's wearing a sombrero. Yeah. It's just agonizing sometimes. They're trying to just miss the mark once in a while. Yeah. I get the feeling that the boardroom is not only in a vacuum, but it's a lot of like old white people making these decisions. I think you may be right. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind

the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion. And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts and big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions,

and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so I would say probably the most controversial aspect of Barbie always from the outset, before she was even created, is her body. Yeah, that's what kept her from being created in the first place, as we mentioned. Mattel CEO said, you can't release a doll with big breasts. I'm glad you finally got that out.

I just didn't even know how to say that. But that's what they said, and since then, Barbie's figure has been notoriously called out as unsupportable, fake, not realistic, and at worst, really bad for these little girls in their body image and what they think they're supposed to look like. Like a tool of body dysmorphic disorder, basically. Yes, like it's not even possible to look that way, they say. It's depending. Okay, so what's very interesting, I think, Chuck, is that this design of her body was actually a design decision made by her designers who were all women, career women,

successful career women, to allow her to wear miniature versions of real fashion clothes. So her crazy hips and small waist, they were designed like that so that she could wear these clothes that gathered at the waist. And she had breasts so she could wear these blouses or whatever that were based on real clothes and designed by real designers. So it was actually a design decision, but it quickly took on its life that Barbie's this evil tool that spreads this unhealthy body image to little girls. Yes, I think it was the 1950s and it was just like, let's make her a full figure and a tiny waist and girls will love it. Or she looks like us.

Yes, this is just my personal opinion here, if you'll allow. That's all well and good. Since then, maybe since they've taken all these steps to introduce more correct versions, maybe they should release a realistic Barbie. Dumpy Barbie? A.K.A. normal looking person Barbie. I don't think it will ever happen. I don't think it will either. They have made changes to her figure. So she's nothing like she was when she first came out.

She's not like she was. She has changed some. But for the most part, there's not going to be a dumpy Barbie. Not if you call it that. See, that's part of the problem is looking average. You call dumpy. Oh, come on, man. I am definitely not part of the problem. I don't I wouldn't call it normal looking person dumpy Barbie. Then compared to Barbie, you would call her dumpy Barbie. I think that's definitely that's the whole zeitgeist behind this whole thing.

Like if if Barbie is perfect than anything else that's different is dumpy. Well, I disagree. Well, National Organization of Women would probably disagree too. They have frequently cited Barbie as again, this instrument of delivering an unhealthy body image to little girls. Yeah. And like you said, they sometimes they don't make it any easier on themselves. Because in the 1963 Barbie sit-up set, there was a pamphlet called how to lose weight. And one of the tips Barbie says, don't eat.

And that's it. So they two years later, there was another booklet, Barbie slumber party that said there was a bathroom scale that was permanently set at 110 pounds. Right. And that's like that's a little weird. The same booklet was included. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's weird. And even if it's not weird.

And again, like if you take just the conventional idea of what's going with the thought is behind this, they said, okay, well, what is Barbie weight? Barbie weighs 110. Well, we can't make a real scale that moves back and forth. So we're going to set it at 110 without any thought that possibly this little girl is going to think that if she doesn't weigh 110, like she's not as pretty as Barbie. Yes, and never will be. And it will always hate herself for not weighing 110 pounds.

It's just these decisions made without this wider thought has kind of given Mattel this reputation. That's right. They've done studies on this. They did one in 2011 in Holland and they said that girls who played with average size dolls for 10 minutes ate significantly more during a taste test following play than girls who played with the Barbie dolls or a thin doll like Barbie. Yeah, to be fair. And another study, which I thought was pretty interesting.

Well, obviously they found that promotes materialism and sexualizes play. But this other study found that there's more torture play and anger play involved with Barbie, like where a little girl will rip off Barbie's arms or head and they found that they ripped off more Barbie parts than other dolls because as one girl said, quote, she's the only one that looks perfect. Right. So I could see that. This is huge, huge, massive body of work on the effect that Barbie's body has on the

little girls that play with her more often than not. They find that it creates a poor self image, body image in little girls. But interestingly, it tends to disappear in tweens. Oh, really? Yeah. Like say they're studying girls three to 10, it'll really appear in like three, four, five, six, but then like seven, eight, nine, 10, like it doesn't appear as much. It's not as prevalent.

Interesting. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is, but you wonder like what's the lasting effect of those when it hits those three, four, five, and six year olds, you know? Yeah, that's true. Formative years. There's also been a lot of studies and reports of what Barbie would look like were she a real person, right?

Yeah, they're always a little disturbing. So you said that like it's impossible to look like Barbie, not entirely, but close. South Australia University researchers calculated that a woman's chance of naturally having Barbie's figure was one in 100,000. I'm surprised there's not more than that. I am too. But for a man to have Ken's figure, you have like a one in 50 chance. You and I are, we don't have good chances.

And in Finland at their university central hospital, they say Barbie were life-size. She would lack the 17 to 22% body fat required for a woman to menstruate. Yeah. So she's so thin, she medically can't even menstruate. Yeah. And the BBC did this comparison of Barbie and one of their employees named Libby. And if Libby were to keep her 28 inch waist, but stay in step with Barbie's other proportions, she would have to be seven feet, six inches tall, which again isn't impossible.

The world's tallest woman is Yao Defen, who's seven feet, eight inches tall. Yeah, but she didn't look like Barbie. And then if she kept her height, if Libby kept her height, but shrank to Barbie's proportion waist, she would have a 20 inch waist, which is three inches smaller in circumference than Victoria Beckham's waist, who's like a beanpole beyond a beanpole. She's got to be like one of the, she's like vampire waist wise. She's thin. And did you see this Ukrainian woman?

Mm-hmm. She says she hasn't had plastic surgery. She's not being truthful. Valeria Lukyanova. Yeah, the quote unquote real life Barbie doll. She's a model artist and singer supposedly. And just look up a picture of her and prepare to get creeped out. She's very anime.

Have you seen her friend that's like the real life anime girl? Yeah, she photoshopped these. She denies it, but I saw untouched before pictures and she's clearly had plastic surgery and she doctors her photos, but it's creepy. She looks like a doll. She doesn't look real. She doesn't look alive. She's in the uncanny valley, but she's a real person.

Yeah. There's a woman named Cindy Jackson, who's a Brit, who actually holds the record for most plastic surgeries in the lifetime, 52 as of April, 2011. And she started undergoing those at age 21 after deciding that she wanted to look like Barbie back when she was six. Yeah. So she moved to London and started going under the knife. I didn't see a picture of her, did you?

Oh yeah. What does she look like? She looks Barbie-ish. Yeah. So we mentioned the litigious nature of Mattel guarding zealously, guarding Barbie's image over the years. And you have dug up via the bathroom reader. Yeah.

Notable examples. Number one, Paul Hansen. In the 1990s, San Francisco artists began selling Barbie art. Basically, drag queen Barbie, Tonya Harding Barbie, Exorcist Barbie. Having a lot of fun with it. Tonya Harding Barbie. I guess it comes with a little mini-crobar. There's Dumpy Barbie right there.

Oh boy. He sold about $150, earned about two grand, and Mattel sued him for $1.2 billion. This is what these corporations can do. They'll just be like, I'm going to sue you for $90 billion. Right, exactly. In damages. What are you going to do? So Hansen is like, all right, all right, all right, everybody just calm down.

How about this? I will sell my dolls only in art galleries, no more stores, just the galleries themselves. And I will donate all of the profits to charity. And Mattel said, no, we're going to court, pal. Yeah. So they went to court and eventually a judge lost patience, it said, and granted a partial judgment and said against Mattel for not having a sense of humor. Yeah, so a little smack on the face, but I'm sure the attorney smugly left with their head held high.

Yeah. And that's kind of similar to another artist's case, Mark Napier, who's from New York. He's got us a website that was originally called the Distorted Barbie website. And it was pictures of Kate Moss Barbie, Fat and Ugly Barbie, Dolly Parton Barbie, and Mattel sent a cease and desist letter. Apparently they were a fan of this guy or something. Yeah, I imagine they have people trolling the world for this kind of stuff. No, I mean, they sent a cease and desist rather than suing him for a billion dollars a day.

Oh, oh, that, yeah, instead of just suing him. But Napier said, you know what, I'm not going to really do this 100%. I'm going to blur the images a little bit and then change the B in Barbie to a dollar sign. I wonder if it's still up. I haven't looked. I haven't looked either. And then there's Barbie Bell, aka Barbara Bell. Yeah, this one is a little, she's a wacky.

She claimed that Barbie was speaking to her. Is that right? Yeah. And started selling chances to channel Barbie's spirit and answer personal questions via Barbie. For three bucks. Three bucks a pop. Barbie will directly through me tell you whatever you want to know. Well, and Barbie sent her first message to Barbara Bell.

The message was, I need respect. So Bell also, this is probably what pushed her over the edge as far as Mattel is concerned. She started publishing the Barbie channeling newsletter. So Mattel threatened a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Bell's like, okay, fine. That's fine. I'll shut down. But first, I'm going to make a statement.

Look, she says, for $3, nobody's getting hurt. I don't claim to be the only voice of Barbie. And I'm sure not taking any other channelers business. I've carved out my own niche in the market. There are 700 million Barbie dolls in the world with no voice. My favorite part is I'm sure not taking any other channelers business. Nobody else would be this crazy is what she's saying. This one turned out a little odd, if you ask me.

In 1997, there's a band called Aqua from Denmark that recorded a song called Barbie Girl. You know the song, right? No. Oh, here it is. Come on, Barbie, let's go party. Now do you recognize it? No. Yes, you do.

I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world's plastic. It's fantastic. Yeah, I don't know. You, I don't believe you. I don't think you realize that I don't listen to radio. I don't believe that you've not heard the song. I haven't. All right, so Mattel filed suit, of course, against MCA.

So this is actually slugging it out with a big corporation for a change. Right, yeah. And it ended up as a bigger battle because of that, I'm sure, because they can all afford big, high-powered attorneys. So they sued Mattel, I'm sorry, MCA, MCA countered. And you know what? We're suing you and we can even bring in expert witnesses that basically will testify that you based this on a little German sex doll, not a sexy doll, but a sexy doll back in the day in

the 1950s. And Mattel was probably like, oh, yeah, we did kind of do that. They had a really good point. They said what Aqua was doing in the song Barbie Girl is not to make Barbie into a sex object as Mattel alleged, but to point out that she's been one all along. Yeah. And then Mattel went, oh. Exactly.

And so in an ironic twist of fate, they ruled the song was protected as parody and tossed out the defamation suit back at Mattel. And then in 2009, Barbie actually recorded a cover version of the song and Mattel released it on YouTube to promote a line of Barbie fashionistas. Isn't that crazy? So they sued them for the song and then they used the song. They covered it. I'm sure for free because it was a cover version.

I wonder. It's sung by whoever does the Barbie songs. This one's my favorite. Paul David. I just felt bad for this guy. He was a Barbie collector, a big time Barbie collector. He was on their team. Yes.

So much so that he published the Barbie catalog and he in the mid 1990s wrote in one of his catalogs that if there were an ugly contest, Elizabeth and Queen Barbie would definitely win. Did you see that one? Yeah. It's Elizabeth the first. Yeah. You know.

It was notoriously dumpy. Yeah. It was just, it looked like Queen Elizabeth the first. Sure. But this guy who they had trusted to help protect Barbie's image had written something snide and so they brought down the hammer of God on him. Also they point out that there were some, he didn't put the registered trademark symbol next to some of the photos, which is like, if you want to get Mattel after you,

just put, forget to put the registered trademark next to a photo of Barbie. Yeah. We should put that on our podcast title. We don't want the Barbie hammer coming down on us. We don't. So Barbie Sue's Mattel accuses them of copyright infringement and eventually Paul David signed a settlement agreement and as the Wall Street Journal reported, it stipulated that Barbie may only be portrayed in his catalog as wholesome, friendly, accessible and kind, caring and

protective, cheerful, fun loving, talented and independent. And what did he do? He was disgusted and sold all those barbies and I guess quit writing his catalog. That was the end of that one. Which is, that's why that one's so sad to me, because he was such a huge supporter of the company, like to be such a fan to go out of your way to publish a catalog. Yeah. And then they essentially just like squash the guy.

Yeah. I remember reading this in like many years ago and thinking like, yeah, that was pretty awful. Yeah. But who knows, maybe it's a turning point for the guy. Maybe he's like, I'm fine. I'm free. Yeah. He walked outside and like talked to real humans.

Yeah. What about Barbie being banned, Chuck? Yeah, this year actually in 2012, she was banned in Iran for destructive cultural and social consequences. Yeah. And they came up with their own little doll and girls called it ugly and fat. I couldn't find a picture of this one. I couldn't find anywhere.

It doesn't look anything like Barbie. It's just a doll. Yeah. Oh, then maybe I did see it. But yeah, the one toy seller called Barbie worse than an American missile. But I also hear that all over Tehran, like you can still get Barbies. No problem under the counter. But for like, this is what your hookup in Tehran tells you.

This is what I hear. Gotcha. Saudi Arabia banned Barbie in 2003 saying she was offensive to Islam. And even in the States, she can't get no respect. West Virginia outlawed Barbie in 2009 or tried to with a bill citing emotional, intellectual impact she has on girls. But I doubt if that went anywhere. It did not.

It's time now. Yeah. We're about to talk to Gordon Javna, the founder of the Bathroom Readers Institute, the guy who introduced me to all this stuff. And we're going to talk to him about the missteps of Barbie, some even more missteps. Yeah. Mattel's got a great and wonderful history of it. So let's let's bring him up.

So, Chuck, we're sitting here talking to the guy, Gordon Javna, the founder of the Bathroom Readers Institute and publisher of the Uncle John's Bathroom Readers Series. His name's not Uncle John. No, it's Gordon. Okay. He we tried to call him Mr. Javna and he went crazy. Yeah, he did. How are you?

I'm fine. Thank you. How are you guys? We're great. We're fantastic. Thank you very much for joining us. We're talking about Barbie. And of course, you know, we've let everybody know all the material from the episode today.

This is a special one because normally we do this from how stuff works articles, but we're doing this from just stuff that's come out of the Bathroom Readers. So we're talking Barbie here. I feel like we've kind of done a pretty good job setting all this up. We've gone into Barbie and Mattel's, I guess, troubled history a lot. We've kind of made it clear that Mattel is pretty good at making missteps. And you've brought along some other examples of ways Mattel has just missed the mark a little bit. I guess you could say with some of their Barbie releases, right?

Yeah, we have some examples of Barbies that created controversy. I don't know that you'd call them all missteps. At least one of them is not a misstep, but certainly a controversial. Sure. So the first one I would mention is Cherra Smile Becky, which they were introduced in 1997. Yeah, we laugh and then feel bad for laughing. No, it's kind of funny. They were actually originally going to call it wheelchair Barbie.

Oh, excuse me, wheelchair Becky. But they had an eye toward diversity. And this was a friend of Barbies who was confined to a wheelchair for an unspecified disability. And incidentally, the doll came with a wheelchair, a little pink wheelchair. And that was fine until Mattel got a complaint from a 17-year-old girl from Washington named Kirstie Johnson. She complained that Barbie's dream house was not wheelchair accessible. But she had a personal interest because she had cerebral palsy

and was confined to a wheelchair herself. So then she also mentioned that the dream house, although the dream house had an elevator, was too to accommodate the wheelchair. So this I think falls into another example we pointed out earlier in the podcast. I believe that Mattel, probably trying to do the right thing here, but in the end sort of takes a ham-fisted approach and doesn't cover all the angles. Sure. Yeah, and their response was to promise a redesign of the dream house,

but instead they just dropped Becky from the Barbie line. It's very sad to have sat into that story. That is all Mattel right there. What else do you have for us? I know totally styling Barbie kind of raised some eyebrows, I believe. It did, and this is the one that I don't know if you'd call it a misstep, but it certainly caused a scandal. They released this one in 2009.

I had a set of stickers that came with it that looked like temporary tattoos. They had two sets, actually. One for the doll, and an example that would be the heart with Ken, the name Ken in it. And they also came with a set of temporary tattoos for the girls who played with the dolls to put on themselves. And they were also, on the package, they encouraged girls to put their lower back, which is what those of us, well, most people know as a tramp stamp. So parents were up in arms because it did two things.

It encouraged girls to give each other homemade tattoos, they said, and they also said it was a message that it was okay for girls to do trampy things. And this is one of those things I wouldn't, I don't know if I would call it a misstep, because Mattel didn't agree and they left it in the line, and it's still available. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that would be kind of the definition of a misstep. If Mattel doesn't back down, then it's not a misstep. Well, which basically means does the doll sell.

Right, exactly. It's a misstep if it doesn't sell and gets bad breath. And can't you see little girls sitting around like, oh, we're out of our Barbie temporary tattoos. Go get a sewing needle and some India ink. Let's get down to brass tags here. And we talked, Gordon, about Skipper already. We talked a little bit about Barbie's family circle.

And we mentioned Skipper, but we didn't mention the controversy that came with her. Like right out of the gate, right when she was released, kind of early on in the Barbie saga in 1975, right? Yeah, Skipper was Barbie's little sister, and she was introduced actually in the 60s. But the original plan was for them to make her a little older with each subsequent release. In 1975, they introduced growing up Skipper, which was controversial almost from the very beginning.

Because what it was was when girls cranked her arm, she grew a quarter of an inch taller, and she sprouted breasts, and she got an hourglass figure. And a tramp stamp. Now you have to put that one on yourself. Yeah, I would be curious to see just the mechanism behind this. I'd like to, I guess I'm saying I'd like to play with one. But I would like to see how that worked.

I want to see the doll grow. I'm interested, that's pretty complicated. I would say if you want to play with it, you'd have to buy one like on eBay, and it would cost you around a hundred bucks. That's not worth it. That's not so bad. There are YouTube videos of the doll in action. Oh, perfect.

We'll have to link to one of those after this thing publishes. Yeah. But again, this isn't a misstep, because as I understand it, Mattel was like, well, we'll see you all in hell, because we're not taking this one off the shelves, because again, it's selling very well. That's correct, but they did phase it out. In 79, they introduced Super Teen Skipper,

which was a, the breasts didn't grow, but they were a little larger than the previous Skipper. And then a couple of years after that, they made her a little bit, took away a little baby fat, and she became Hot Stuff Skipper. No, was that really what they called her? Yeah, Hot Stuff Skipper. Wow.

So Gordon, you and your brother started out before the bathroom reader. You guys wrote a book about the 60s and the 80s, and you guys mentioned Barbie in that book, right? Yes, indeed. So what did you guys say? We said it was a pop culture book, very early pop culture book about the 60s.

We said in the introduction that Barbie was as important, a cultural icon as anything that happened in the 1960s. And we were lambasted, or lambasted, whatever, in the press or in reviews for, you know, like somehow putting Barbie over the war in Vietnam or civil rights, right, and we weren't. But we just felt that this was going to be a lasting cultural image, and we were a little ahead on that.

Yeah, we're just laughing now. Exactly. Well, let's talk about your books. See, you guys are releasing the 25th anniversary of Uncle John's bathroom reader. Congratulations. That's enormous. So tell us a little bit about this.

Well, you know, we never thought we would be doing this for 25 years, and I should say that the actual inspiration for doing the bathroom reader was my brother's idea to give credit where credit is due. But, you know, that first book was 228 pages long, and our latest one, Uncle John's fully loaded bathroom reader, we made it 608 pages. Wow.

So it's quite a giant book that covers a zillion topics, and just like any other bathroom reader, only a little more so. So where can everybody find the 25th anniversary? Well, all of your books, where's the best place to find them? Well, hopefully your local bookstore will have Uncle John's fully loaded bathroom reader. Certainly, the chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble will have it. You can get it at Costco, Sam's Club, get it online from Amazon,

or you can get it online from us at bathroomreader.com. Oh, that's great. Cool. We'd love to have people visit us, and sometimes they make suggestions of what we should be including, and that's fantastic. Hey, thank you very much for joining us. You guys are doing the 25th anniversary edition of Uncle John's bathroom reader. It's available pretty much anywhere you can find a book, right?

Absolutely. I will be looking forward to reading it this Christmas. So thank you very much, Gordon Javna. We appreciate you. Thank you, Josh. Thank you, Chuck. Thanks. So long.

Bye-bye. Well, Josh, that was awesome. Yes. Thanks for hooking that up, man. Sorry I was a fanboy kind of. No, it was great. It was great whenever you can get the real people on the line, and sometimes it happens.

You just got to do it. I'm just glad he answered. I mean, we were really running a gamble by calling him in the middle of recording. That's true. All right, so should we finish up with a few of the more odd Barbie dolls throughout history? Yeah, these aren't missteps. They're just unusual. Yeah, and I'm sure there was not a marketing campaign behind any of them,

just tied to another country or a company. There is Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds Barbie, and this Barbie looked like Tippi Hadron from the movie, and it has three blackbirds attached to her, so they're like perpetually attacking her. Yeah. She's being attacked by blackbirds, this Barbie. Uh, my favorite is Pooper Scooper Barbie,

and I guess this is to teach girls, or I guess boys, if they play with dolls, we've been seeing girls the whole time. It comes with a little golden retriever named Tanner who eats in poops, and really poops, and Barbie has a little shovel and pail to be a responsible dog owner and curb her dog. Yeah, that's what you can aspire to do. That's right. Um, there's the McDonald's one, which we talked about.

She's wearing a headset, which I think threw you off, but can a franchisee work at his or her own store? Yes. Yeah. No taken. To me, the most bizarre one of all time. I know what you're going to say. Is I love Lucy's Santa Barbie.

That's not what I thought you were going to say. Oh yeah? I thought you were going to say George Washington Barbie. It's pretty bizarre. All right, so what's the I Love Lucy one? The I Love Lucy Santa Barbie is based on a specific episode of I Love Lucy from 1956, and Barbie is dressed as Ethel Mertz, who is dressed as Santa Claus. That's the weirdest Barbie ever.

Yeah. She's not dressed as Santa. She's dressed as Ethel from I Love Lucy dressed as Santa. My, like, my mind is mush. Yeah, I think some Mattel, like, employee higher up was, like, hammered on eggnog on Christmas Eve watching this. George Washington's episode. And said, oh, I got a great idea.

And I guess George Washington Barbie followed, or actually that proceeded in 1997. Yeah. And that's pretty much straight up. She is dressed like George Washington. And is Revolutionary War uniform? That's right, except that's pink in it. There's the NBA Barbie, which doesn't seem all that weird. You can get all the different teams, right?

But there's never been a WNBA Barbie. That's the weird part. X-Files Barbie. That's a little strange. Yeah. There was a Ken dressed as Dukovnis, Fox Mulder. And of course, Barbie dressed in a pantsuit as Scully. Yeah.

Goldie Hawn Barbie? I loved that Goldie Hawn and Laugh In. Yeah, that's who it's based on. Yeah, with the bikini and the tattoos. It's just sort of an iconic television figure. Yeah. I mean, where are you going to do? Wildcats?

Goldie Hawn? That was terrible. Yeah, or Ruth Buzzy? Barbie? Barbie? You know? Wow, Wildcats Goldie Hawn. Overboard Goldie Hawn?

Right. There was Harley-Davidson Barbie as a biker chick with head-to-toe leather. That's right. That's weird. And then there's a bunch of other just slightly noteworthy ones. French-made Barbie. Lady of the Unicorns Barbie. Civil War Nurse Barbie.

John Deere Barbie. Urban Hipster Barbie? Yeah, I looked up Urban Hipster Barbie and I thought it was going to be like some Brooklyn chick with horn room glasses and it was just, it looked more like Foxy Brown like Blacksploitation Barbie. Really? They called it, that's what they called Urban Hipster. Like Big Afro, sort of like African-American goddess.

Wow. Yeah. If it was Urban Hipster today, it would be she would have a mustache and horn room glasses and live in Williamsburg. There's Star Trek Barbie and Ken and Barbie's dressed as Lieutenant Uhura. NASCAR and John Deere Barbies? Bowling Champ Barbie? This one's one of my favorites.

Barbie and Ken is the monsters. Yeah. They have so much fun those two. And then of course the Pepsi Barbie also had the Coca-Cola Barbie to do battle and the Cola Wars. Because if there's one thing Mattel doesn't want to do, it's to offend any segment of the American population. Nope.

The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that.

And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting?

Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion. And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio.

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Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, that's it, man. You got anything else? No, I think in lieu of listener mail, we had the interview, and we just want to say thanks again to Uncle John's bathroom reader. Yes, thank you very much for everything all these years. Appreciate you guys. And we appreciate you guys too for listening. Agreed. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast.

Join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know, or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.