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Collage 164 H u m o u r N e t 24 OCT 95Collage 164 features a piece by the beloved Dave Barry--a man whoneeds no introduction. So, instead of trying to come up with somelame opener, I'll simply provide you with this TOTALLY UNRELATEDJOKE, prepared with virtually NO effort on my part :-)...The world's first FAMOUS QUOTE:"Scattered showers, my ass!" - NoahMany large "THANKS!" to Cindy--seen here making her HumourNet debut,I believe--for the Dave Barry contribution. And for all you DB fansout there, remember that DAVE HAS A HOME PAGE!http://www.sjmercury.com/dbhome.htmTo get to the "real" Dave Barry material, you'll have to subscribeto the Mercury Center Web--but at 1/month, it's hardly even worthmentioning. Details are on the page. And now, on to our featurearticle: "Rollerblade Barbie."Go Dave, Go...- Vince Sabio HumourNet Moderator HumourNet@telephonet."Opener (above) Copyright 1995 by Vincent Sabio Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage"; please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message" Barbieby Dave BarryAs executive director of the Bureau of Consumer Alarm, I am alwayson the alert for news stories that involve two key elements:1. Fire2. BarbieSo I was very interested when alert reader Michael Robinson sent mea column titled "Ask Jack Sunn" from the Dec. 13, 1993, issue of theJackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger. Here's an excerpt from a consumer'sletter to this column, which I am not making up:"Last year, my two daughters received presents of two RollerbladeBarbie dolls by Mattel. On March 8, my 8-year-old daughter wasplaying beauty shop with her 4-year-old brother. After spraying himwith hair spray, the children began to play with the boot toRollerblade Barbie. My little girl innocently ran the skate acrossher brother's bottom, which immediately ignited his clothes."The letter adds that "There are no warnings concerning fire on thesetoys... I feel the need to warn potential buyers of their danger."In his response, Jack Sunn says, cryptically, that "Mattel does notmanufacture Rollerblade Barbie any more." He does not address thecritical question that the consumer's letter raised in my mind, asI'm sure it did yours, namely: Huh?I realized that the only way to answer this question was to conduct ascientific experiment. As you may recall, last year, in response toa news item concerning a kitchen fire in Ohio, I did an experimentproving that if you put a Kellogg's strawberry Pop-Tart in a toasterand hold the toaster lever down for five minutes and 50 seconds, thePop-Tart will turn into a snack-pastry blowtorch, shooting flames upto 30 inches high. Also, your toaster will be ruined.The problem was that I did not have a Rollerblade Barbie. My sonhappens to be a boy, and we never went through the Barbie phase. Wewent through the Masters of the Universe phase. For two years, ourhousehold was the scene of a fierce, unceasing battle between armiesof good and evil action figures. They were everywhere. You'd openup the salad crisper, and there would be He-Man and Skeletor, strikingeach other with carrots.So at the end of a recent column, I printed a note appealing for aRollerblade Barbie. I got two immediately; one from Renee Simmons ofClinton, Iowa, and one from Randy Langhenry of Gainesville, Ga., whosaid it belonged to his 6-year-old daughter, Greta. ("It would helpme if you could get Barbie back to north Georgia before Greta noticesshe'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 abeautiful female is one who is six feet, nine inches tall and weighs52 pounds (37 of which are in the bust area) and has a rigidly perkysmile and eyeballs the size of beer coasters and a one-molecule noseand enough hair to clog the Lincoln Tunnel.But what makes this Barbie special is that she's wearing two littleyellow Rollerblade booties, each of which has a wheel similar to thekind found in cigarette lighters, so that when you roll Barbie along,her booties shoot out sparks. This seems like an alarming thing forRollerblades to do, but Barbie, staring perkily ahead, does not seemto notice.To ensure high standards of scientific accuracy, I conducted theexperiment in my driveway. Aside from Rollerblade Barbie, mymaterials consisted of several brands of hair spray and--this was apainful sacrifice--a set of my veteran underwear (estimated year ofpurchase: 1968). I spread the underwear on the driveway, then sprayedit with hair spray, and made Rollerblade Barbie skate across it,sparking her booties. I found that if you use the right brand ofhair spray--I got excellent results with Rave--Rollerblade Barbiedoes indeed cause the underwear to burst dramatically into flame.(While I was doing this, a neighbor walked up, and I just want tosay that if you think it's easy to explain why you're squatting inyour driveway, in front of a set of burning underwear, surrounded byhair spray bottles, holding a Barbie doll in your hand, then you aremistaken.)[Editor's Note: Unless, of course, you're Dave Barry. Then yourneighbor--who probably keeps reminding you that the Miami real-estatemarket is favorable to home sellers (whether it really is or not),and continually mentions how the new homes in Boca Raton are reallyquite nice--probably just strolls by and casually says, "Hi, Dave!... Nice Barbie doll." Which is worse than actually *asking* for anexplanation, anyway... ]At this point, the only remaining scientific question--I'm surethis has occurred to you--was: Could Rollerblade Barbie set fireto 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 whenBarbie Rollerblades over it, so you get a blowtorch effect thatcould very easily set fire to Barbie's hair, not to mention you ownpersonal self. Plus you get tart filling in the booties.So we can see why Mattel ceased manufacturing Rollerblade Barbie. Iimagine that whichever toy designer dreamed up this exciting concepthas been transferred to Mattel's coveted Bosnia plant. But whatshould be done about all the Rollerblade Barbies that are already incirculation? I believe that the only solution is for all concernedconsumers to demand that our congress-humans pass a federal lawrequiring that all underwear, snack pastries and other householdobjects carry a prominent label stating:"WARNING! DO NOT SPRAY HAIR SPRAY ON THIS OBJECT AND SKATEROLLERBLADE BARBIE OVER IT!"But that is not enough. We also need to appropriate millions ofdollars for a massive federal effort to undo the damage that has beendone so far. I'm talking about scraping this crud off my driveway.Also, the taxpayers owe Greta a new Barbie.
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