Subject: rollerblade barbie
From: [email-masked] (agu)
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Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 13:17:45 -0800

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Rollerblade Barbie
by Dave Barry

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, Mississippi 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 in 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 Barbie. 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 Kellogg'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.