Originally published at: menino.com - Miguel's website
If you’ve watched the BBC kids’s show “In The Night Garden,” you’ll recognize the video below:
Warning: it’s a bit freaky unless you’re a toddler 😉 I guess it must make sense to them.
You’ll notice that one of the characters on the show is a black doll named “Upsy Daisy” — she has awesome colourful hair and dances around quite a bit.
I looked for a place to order a set of In The Night Garden toys for Xavier, and I found a UK site that would ship them to Canada. Well now they are starting to appear in Canadian stores, such as Wal-Mart and Zellers (and presumably other toy stores as well).
Well, here’s the weird thing. The Canadian version of Upsy Daisy is white. Here’s a shot from the local Zellers:
Compare that to this version:
and a couple of screenshots from the TV show:
That second screenshot is telling, because you can see that she’s a lot darker than Makka Pakka. Yet in the Canadian doll version, she’s the same colour.
So what’s going on here? Did they think that a black doll wouldn’t sell in Canada (or is it North America?) Or is just hard to find the right colour material to make a black doll?
If you do an Google image search: http://images.google.com/images?q=upsy%20daisy you’ll find both black and white dolls. Here’s a UK store selling a black one: http://www.tishtashtoys.com/image.htm?tttid=MG002