The company that makes Beanie Babies has introduced two new dolls, named Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia.
Hey, wait a minute, aren’t Sasha and Malia the names of the Obama daughters? Yes.
Coincidence? Ty Inc, the company in Oak Brook, Illinois, that makes the dolls said yes and no.
PHOTO: AFP
“They are beautiful names,” Tania Lundeen, a spokeswoman for Ty, said in an interview.
But, “there’s nothing on the girls that refers to the Obama girls,” she said.
But what about the fact that in addition to sharing unusual names, Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia are slender brown-skinned and brown-eyed dolls that bear a resemblance to the seven and 10-year-old darlings who just moved into the White House?
“It would not be fair to say they are exact replications of these girls,” Lundeen said.
But the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has publicly described her role as “mom in chief,” apparently was not amused.
“We feel it is inappropriate to use young, private citizens for marketing purposes,” Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Michelle Obama’s press secretary, said in a statement on Saturday.
The first lady’s office declined to comment further. A representative for Ty could not be reached late on Saturday.
Ty released the foot-tall (30.5cm) dolls as part of its TyGirlz Collection, and they are featured prominently on the company’s Web site. Sweet Sasha’s dark brown doll hair is twisted in braids, while Marvelous Malia’s is of similar length but pulled into a long ponytail over her left shoulder.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS