Ghetto Kids dolls don't play well this holiday season
 |
|
||||||||||
CHICAGO — The holiday season may have just ended for many of us, but it never really started for a controversial line of inner-city dolls. Dubbed the Ghetto Kids, the dolls generated plenty of comment but not a lot of sales.
Most people's holiday spirit didn't seem to extend to Confederate Tammy, East L.A. Lupe and Beantown Cynthia, part of a motley crew of six cherubic, down-on-their-luck dolls whose "histories" include drugs, abuse and abandonment.
These dolls from the 'hood come with empty garbage cans and a comic strip the creators say is educational and can be read online.
Supporters praise what they see as the dolls' realism. Detractors say the dolls are stereotyping and of no use to children already living with the issues the dolls raise.
But creator Thomas Perez insists the dolls are meant to be educational. The shock value of the word "ghetto" is meant to grab parents' attention, he says, but the future of the dolls may include changing the trade name to something less controversial and perhaps eliminating the garbage can. One certain change is that Confederate Tammy will no longer reside in a trailer in the online comic strip.
The dolls are intended to give parents an opening to discuss everything from substance abuse to peer pressure with their children, says Perez, a Chicago businessman who ascribes his own street savvy to a gritty upbringing and who has had several run-ins with the law.
"What's out in the streets is a hundred percent for real," he says.
But the dolls only stigmatize those in less fortunate circumstances, says Yolanda Simmons, a teacher from National-Louis University who works with inner-city youngsters in high schools.
"I think rather than positively address human diversity, the dolls exploit race, ethnicity, social class and disability," Simmons says. "If these situations happen all over, why is he confining it to one type of people? Why didn't he call them the Suburban Kids? That's what I want to know. I do think it would be a good concept but the way he packaged it is wrong. He will be making things worse."
The dolls — three white, two Latino and one biracial — have the same smiley faces and barely differ in complexion. An African-American doll is in the works, according to Perez.
They also have a past that sounds like something out of an underclass hell.
Like the American Girl dolls, each kid has a story. But the Ghetto Kids story lines were so shocking that the "biographies" were taken out of the boxes recently after parents complained.
In the story lines, all of the dolls have been abandoned by their parents and left on the streets. Their individual stories include early brushes with alcoholism, drug abuse, violence and other societal ills.
When they first went on sale several months ago, the dolls were priced at $39.99. After the New Year, however, the price was dropped to less than $20. About 670 dolls were reported sold from a run of 1,000 copies of each of the six dolls.
The concept of the dolls, manufactured in Mexico, involved several Chicago public-school teachers and police officers, who volunteered to work on a Web site and come up with story lines for each doll.
For example, one doll's dad is a drug dealer and the mother a heroin-addicted prostitute. They forget their daughter, "San Juan Carmen," in a crack house.
Juan Baez, a high-school art and English-as-a-Second-Language teacher at Nuestra America Charter High School in Chicago, worked on the graphics and ideas for the project with a group in the Latino community.
Over three or four years, this informal group would meet over dinner. At first, Baez says, he was against using "ghetto" to describe the dolls and wondered if the name was meant to attract publicity. But since then, he adds, he is impressed with the way the dolls have turned out.
"Sometimes we have to face the fact that there are horrible things going on, evil, you know, and sometimes we have to deal with it," Baez says.
Retired Chicago Police Cmdr. Esmagde Noel Cristia, 61, one of several police officers who helped, says he is irritated by a climate that prevents people from tackling issues. He says he would prefer that his son ask why these "kids" were abandoned rather than, "Why is Barbie so pretty?"
Although she stopped to look at the dolls during her pre-Christmas shopping, mom Dina Tomuta, 34, said she had her doubts. She was shopping with her husband, Mike, 36, who was carrying son Mark, 5, on his shoulders.
"They look OK, but I don't know if I would actually buy one," Tomuta said. "I mean, kids want happy things. I don't think they want a doll with problems."
But a few shoppers thought the dolls were cute and said the Ghetto Kids reminded them of the Cabbage Patch Dolls of the '80s or their nastier cousins, the Garbage Pail Kids.
Lakeita Johnson, 15, said the dolls "tell it straight." Her friend, Contessa Perry, also 15, agreed.
"It's something that's different. We've never seen anything like that before."
A product of the Chicago ghetto, Perez, 55, says he was introduced to alcoholism and prostitution at a young age when he lived with his father in a hotel that, he says, "was nothing more than a bordello."
His businesses in vending machines made him a prominent figure in the Latino community and a major contributor to campaign funds.
In 1997, Perez was sentenced to a 10-month work-release program and three years' probation for failing to report $330,000 of income on his federal tax returns.
Ten years earlier, Perez was acquitted by a federal jury on charges of mail fraud and racketeering in connection with bribes reportedly paid to Chicago police for inside information on who was applying for liquor licenses. Perez, who lives in Schaumburg with his wife and two young daughters, acknowledges his past but said that has nothing to do with his dolls.
"It's a business venture where I am trying to give back to the community," he says of the Ghetto Kids.