Marvelous Malia and Sweet Sasha

I find it interesting that it hasn’t even been a month since the Obama’s have been in office and the major corporations are already trying to make bank off of their historic achievement. Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia are dolls created by Ty, the makers of beanie babies. They came out right before the inauguration. The company has denied that they are actually based off of the children of President Barack Obama. Alan Duke wrote an article for CNN, Ty denies Obama girls inspired Sweet Sasha, Marvelous Malia. The press secretary for Michelle Obama, Katie McCormick Lelyveld said, “"We feel it is inappropriate to use young private citizens for marketing purposes,” (Duke).

I feel like this coincides with our discussion in class last week on sacred and profane objects. The dolls have gone from being seemingly meaningless dolls to important historic and attention oriented dolls. If the Obama’s weren’t in office we would not have even heard of these dolls. It is just too much of a coincidence that the two dolls, the only African American dolls in their collection for 30, would have the same names as the President’s daughters. The company is making profit off of the innocence of two young children who have been thrown into the spotlight.

If it was a contest that had won a few lucky kids the opportunity to have dolls created for them this would be a totally different story. Michelle Obama may have even signed off a consent form to have the dolls made if Ty had asked. In many cases this could have been a kind of flattery for the family but Ty never consulted with the White House and has consistently denied that the dolls were inspired by Sasha and Malia Obama."Information concerning the development of our products and how we come up with names, how we select them, how we trademark -- that's considered as proprietary. I can't go any further with that question. Sasha and Malia are beautiful names" that "worked very well with the dolls we were making," said Senior Vice President of Sales for Ty, Tania Lundeen (Duke).


Duke, Alan. "Ty denies Obama girls inspired Sweet Sasha, Marvelous Malia - CNN.com." CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. 23 Jan. 2009.
.