Collage 164               H u m o u r N e t               24 OCT 95

Collage 164 features a piece by the beloved Dave Barry--a man who
needs no introduction. So, instead of trying to come up with some
lame opener, I'll simply provide you with this TOTALLY UNRELATED
JOKE, prepared with virtually NO effort on my part :-) ...

The world's first FAMOUS QUOTE:
"Scattered showers, my ass!" - Noah

Many large "THANKS!" to Cindy--seen here making her HumourNet debut,
I believe--for the Dave Barry contribution. And for all you DB fans
out there, remember that DAVE HAS A HOME PAGE!

http://www.sjmercury.com/dbhome.htm

To get to the "real" Dave Barry material, you'll have to subscribe
to the Mercury Center Web--but at $1/month, it's hardly even worth
mentioning. Details are on the page. And now, on to our feature
article: "Rollerblade Barbie."

Go Dave, Go ...

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          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.
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Rollerblade Barbie
by Dave Barry

As executive director of the Bureau of Consumer Alarm, I am always
on the alert for news stories that involve two key elements:

1. Fire
2. Barbie

So I was very interested when alert reader Michael Robinson sent me
a column titled "Ask Jack Sunn" from the Dec. 13, 1993, issue of the
Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger. Here's an excerpt from a consumer's
letter to this column, which I am not making up:

"Last year, my two daughters received presents of two Rollerblade
Barbie dolls by Mattel. On March 8, my 8-year-old daughter was
playing beauty shop with her 4-year-old brother. After spraying him
with hair spray, the children began to play with the boot to
Rollerblade Barbie. My little girl innocently ran the skate across
her brother's bottom, which immediately ignited his clothes."

The letter adds that "There are no warnings concerning fire on these
toys ... I feel the need to warn potential buyers of their danger."

In his response, Jack Sunn says, cryptically, that "Mattel does not
manufacture Rollerblade Barbie any more." He does not address the
critical question that the consumer's letter raised in my mind, as
I'm sure it did yours, namely: Huh?

I realized that the only way to answer this question was to conduct a
scientific experiment. As you may recall, last year, in response to
a news item concerning a kitchen fire in Ohio, I did an experiment
proving that if you put a Kellogg's strawberry Pop-Tart in a toaster
and hold the toaster lever down for five minutes and 50 seconds, the
Pop-Tart will turn into a snack-pastry blowtorch, shooting flames up
to 30 inches high. Also, your toaster will be ruined.

The problem was that I did not have a Rollerblade Barbie. My son
happens to be a boy, and we never went through the Barbie phase. We
went through the Masters of the Universe phase. For two years, our
household was the scene of a fierce, unceasing battle between armies
of good and evil action figures. They were everywhere. You'd open
up the salad crisper, and there would be He-Man and Skeletor, striking
each other with carrots.

So at the end of a recent column, I printed a note appealing for a
Rollerblade Barbie. I got two immediately; one from Renee Simmons of
Clinton, Iowa, and one from Randy Langhenry of Gainesville, Ga., who
said it belonged to his 6-year-old daughter, Greta. ("It would help
me if you could get Barbie back to north Georgia before Greta notices
she'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 a
beautiful female is one who is six feet, nine inches tall and weighs
52 pounds (37 of which are in the bust area) and has a rigidly perky
smile and eyeballs the size of beer coasters and a one-molecule nose
and enough hair to clog the Lincoln Tunnel.

But what makes this Barbie special is that she's wearing two little
yellow Rollerblade booties, each of which has a wheel similar to the
kind found in cigarette lighters, so that when you roll Barbie along,
her booties shoot out sparks. This seems like an alarming thing for
Rollerblades to do, but Barbie, staring perkily ahead, does not seem
to notice.

To ensure high standards of scientific accuracy, I conducted the
experiment in my driveway. Aside from Rollerblade Barbie, my
materials consisted of several brands of hair spray and--this was a
painful sacrifice--a set of my veteran underwear (estimated year of
purchase: 1968). I spread the underwear on the driveway, then sprayed
it with hair spray, and made Rollerblade Barbie skate across it,
sparking her booties. I found that if you use the right brand of
hair spray--I got excellent results with Rave--Rollerblade Barbie
does indeed cause the underwear to burst dramatically into flame.

(While I was doing this, a neighbor walked up, and I just want to
say that if you think it's easy to explain why you're squatting in
your driveway, in front of a set of burning underwear, surrounded by
hair spray bottles, holding a Barbie doll in your hand, then you are
mistaken.)

[Editor's Note: Unless, of course, you're Dave Barry. Then your
neighbor--who probably keeps reminding you that the Miami real-estate
market is favorable to home sellers (whether it really is or not),
and continually mentions how the new homes in Boca Raton are really
quite nice--probably just strolls by and casually says, "Hi, Dave!
... Nice Barbie doll." Which is worse than actually *asking* for an
explanation, anyway ... </vs>]

At this point, the only remaining scientific question--I'm sure
this has occurred to you--was: Could Rollerblade Barbie set fire
to 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 when
Barbie Rollerblades over it, so you get a blowtorch effect that
could very easily set fire to Barbie's hair, not to mention you own
personal self. Plus you get tart filling in the booties.

So we can see why Mattel ceased manufacturing Rollerblade Barbie. I
imagine that whichever toy designer dreamed up this exciting concept
has been transferred to Mattel's coveted Bosnia plant. But what
should be done about all the Rollerblade Barbies that are already in
circulation? I believe that the only solution is for all concerned
consumers to demand that our congress-humans pass a federal law
requiring that all underwear, snack pastries and other household
objects carry a prominent label stating:

"WARNING! DO NOT SPRAY HAIR SPRAY ON THIS OBJECT AND SKATE
ROLLERBLADE BARBIE OVER IT!"

But that is not enough. We also need to appropriate millions of
dollars for a massive federal effort to undo the damage that has been
done so far. I'm talking about scraping this crud off my driveway.

Also, the taxpayers owe Greta a new Barbie.

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