Book-It 'o9! Book #22
Jul. 11th, 2009 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alivemagdoleneMore of the Fifty Books Challenge! This was a library request.
Title: Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel by Jerry Oppenheimer
Details: Copyright 1999, Wiley
Synopsis (By Way of the Inside Flap): From Boise to Beijing, Mattel's toys dominate the universe. Its no-fun-and-games marketing muscles reaches some 140 countries, and its iconic products-- Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Chatty Cathy to name a few-- have been a part of our culture for generations.
Now, in this intriguing and entertaining exposé, New York Times best selling author Jerry Oppenheimer places the world's largest toy company under a journalistic microscope, uncovering the dark side of toy land, and exploring Mattel's oddball corporate culture and eccentric, often bizarre, cast of characters.
Based on exclusive interviews and an exhaustive review of public and private records Toy Monster exposes Mattel's take-no-prisoners, shark-infested corporate style. Throughout this scrupulously reported, unauthorized portrait, you'll discover how dangerous toys are actually nothing new to Mattel, and why its fearsomely litigious approach within the brutal toy business has helped their products dominate over potential rivals such as Bratz.
But this is only part of the story. Along the way, you'll become familiar with the larger-than-life personalities who have shaped Mattel's eccentric world. There's cofounder Ruth Handler, a "one-woman sales-merchandising-promotion-administrative force, a sort of industrial Orson Welles," who becomes a white-collar criminal. There's Jack Ryan, the "Father of Barbie," whose second of five wives calls him "a full-blown seventies-style swinger into wife-swapping and sundry sexual pursuits as a way of life." And don't forget CEO Robert Eckert, who came from the worlds of processed cheeses and hot dogs to lead Mattel-- only to get grilled by the U.S. Congress, and the world press, in the lead-paint-and-dangerous-magnets cause célèbre.
The phenomenal Barbie brand's 50th anniversary arrives in 2009, hot on the heels of the China Toy Terror recall scandal that has tarnished Mattel's image in the hearts and minds of millions of people worldwide. Toy Monster takes you inside the many scandals that have been a part of this company, and shows you why today's toy business is always fun and games.
Why I Wanted to Read It: This book was written about in Newsweek along with Barbie and Ruth as the "dueling biographies" of Barbie's origins that were released in honor of the doll's fiftieth anniversary. Barbie and Ruth was a book-long puff piece, applying a heavy layer of gloss to both the life of Ruth Handler and her creation and this book was supposed to be the antidote.
How I Liked It: From aforementioned Newsweek article (you can read it for yourself here), I was aware this was going to be a least a bit of a hatchet job from the name alone. Given how nauseating I found Barbie and Ruth, the idea sounded like a breath of fresh air.
Oppenheimer has several factors riding against him from the start. For one, he's well-known for his tabloid-esque tomes (taking down Martha Stewart in Just Desserts was arguably his most popular one to date) in the vein of Kitty Kelley, who indeed positively blurbs the book on the back cover. Also, in the Newsweek piece that brought my attention to what they call these "dueling biographies", he professes to having discovered "Barbie-gate".
The book starts off as enjoyable in a juicy, gossipy fashion, even as Oppenheimer's obvious bias against Ruth Handler and favor of a Mattel product designer who he claims was "Father of Barbie" (which gets increasingly annoying as he starts referring to him thusly rather than by his name), Jack Ryan. Oppenheimer agrees with the story of Ruth Handler envisioning an adult doll for little girls and finding a model for the doll she was told couldn't be built on a family vacation to Germany wherein she stumbles upon the quasi-pornographic gag gift, the Bild Lilli doll, a toy based on a naughty Germany comic strip character whose exploits were chronicled in the Bild-Zeitung, a trashy German tabloid which author M.G. Lord has compared to America's National Enquirer. However, once Barbie came into development, Oppenheimer claims Jack Ryan was the one (and the only one) to truly make the dream a reality. While this is by all known information factually inaccurate (Oppenheimer downplays the influence of fashion designer Charlotte Johnson, a central figure in repackaging Lilli into Barbie through the preciseness of her wardrobe; as well, he does not even mention Ernest Dichter, the seminal marketing strategist already legendary when the Handlers sought him out and without whom the Barbie doll would certainly not ever have done as well as it did on the American market or perhaps even been placed on the market at all), Oppenheimer's telling of Ryan's life story makes for a decent read, despite his aforementioned gushing bias.
Once Oppenheimer drifts out of Ryan's era however (this book covers Mattel's origins up to the present day), the book starts to flounder. Spotty information can be overlooked in favor of a good story, sure, but as the book wears on, Oppenheimer delivers more on the former than the latter. His extra pernicious prose regarding Handler and one time Mattel CEO Jill Barad are particularly tiresome, and suggest a waft of sexism. Oppenheimer claims Barad blamed her fall from Mattel in part on sexism, just as other corrupt women in power, such as Martha Stewart, did and have. While a degree of truth lies in Oppenheimer's scorn for Barad's playing of the gender card (in Forever Barbie, the brilliant, multi-faceted 1994 biography of the Barbie doll, Barad told author M.G. Lord in an interview that she did not define herself as a feminist, including the curious "I'm very female."), he portrays both Barad and Handler as emasculating (he notes Barad completely eclipsing her husband in business and his earning the name "Mr. Jill Barad" behind the couple's back), shrill, pompous stereotypes straight out of a Mommie Dearest version of Joan Crawford's interaction with any sort of business ("Don't FUCK with me, fellas!"). In contrast, Oppenheimer handles Jack Ryan's apparent misogyny with explanation. Ryan's continually held a harem of mistresses and wives whom he customized to his tastes with diet pills, plastic surgery (including facial reconstruction, breast augmentation, and a vaginoplasty for his third wife Linda Henson), and physical trainers when he felt necessary (he hired a trainer to develop Henson's calf muscles which involved three sessions weekly to meet Ryan's proclivity for "shapely legs"). The sad case of Linda Henson ended with her breakdown after Ryan continued to cheat on her, apparently driving her to drink heavily, put on weight, and "ruin her gorgeous figure". According to Oppenheimer, "[D]isgusted with Henson's body, Ryan divorced her after a relatively short, roller-coaster marriage." (pg 56) Henson tried to win him back by losing weight, refusing to eat altogether, finally refusing even water, and dying of a heart attack in her thirties brought on by the anorexia she had developed. Along with the disturbing and, in the case of Henson, tragic way he treated his sexual partners, Ryan threw "uninhibited parties" some of which including a "large phallus-shaped dial over the entrance with numbers from 1 to 10. When a woman entered the room, he had a cohort pull a cord that moved the dial up, stopping at a certain number that indicated how sexy she was, a 10 being va-va-voom. He called it the 'Peter Meter'." (pg 61) Despite all this, Oppenheimer insists that Ryan "had enormous respect for the intelligence of women. 'Women's work isn't given the proper value, and, as a result, they get angry,' [Ryan] espoused. 'More than that, they try to become amateur men. The thinking process of women is quite different from men, and we should recognize that-- and also recognize its probable superiority.'" (pg 52)
The book really loses itself by the time it reaches the 2007 recall scandals of lead poisoning and dangerous magnets. For the heart-breaking cases Oppenheimer shares of families that fell victim to the dangerously made magnets, he makes a sloppy mistake, referring repeatedly to the poorly made toy responsible as "Polly Pockets" rather than the correct "Polly Pocket". A seemingly minute mistake, but when one considers how extensively he covers (or claims to cover) the instances in which the toy almost killed several young children, you do have to wonder why he couldn't bother to get the name of the deadly culprit correct, particularly when he lambastes Mattel for not pulling them from the market sooner.
Finally he reaches possibly Mattel's most unsettling moment, the legal case over the only fashion doll to ever seriously threaten Mattel's most valuable asset, Barbie. He describes the origins of MGA's Bratz and their respective creators, as well as Mattel's dangerous and frequently corrupt litigious side (he shares that Bratz creator Isaac Larian received an anonymous letter to his office claiming that two named Mattel executives "have collaborated to spy on you and your family at your home and your children's school." The author or authors of the note have never been found, despite Larian's posting of the letter on the MGA website with a reward of $10,000 for information leading to the sender and proof that the accusations made were true). While the "Bratz vs Barbie" case has not yet reached its outcome, Oppenheimer ends the chapter (and thus the book) abruptly, something that almost ensures the book will not age well, particularly given its already sloppy style and loose relationship with facts.
He offers a final "Author's Note on Sources" in which he lauds his book as "the first objective and independent book about Mattel"(pg 265), he claims to have culled his information from the coverage on Mattel's various "[c]ontroversies, scandals, toy announcements-- everything from mundane quarterly earnings reports to front-page blockbusters-- have received coverage in daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines, and in recent years, on the Internet." (pg 266) He also cites his "firsthand interviews" as valuable to his writing "a cohesive, readable, and balanced story." (pg 266) He names several of the published sources, but only by title of the particular magazine or newspaper, never the exact article.
Oppenheimer then offers an extremely limited "selected bibliography" which consists of a mere ten books, three of them being Zsa Zsa Gabor(second wife of Jack Ryan)'s autobiography, his mistress Barbara Kerr's investigation of drug addiction Broken Places: Women Who Have Survived Drugs, and one time girlfriend Kay Redfield Jamison's psychiatric study Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, only two of which actually mention Jack Ryan.
Lastly, Oppenheimer gives a section of "Acknowledgments" where he states
"My goal was to paint an objective portrait of the world's largest toy company-- the House of Barbie, Hot Wheels, and many other toys that have brought joy to generations.
But from the start of my research, Mattel, to my surprise, declined to offer any assistance." (pg 269)
One wonders if he already had his title in place when he requested said interviews.
Oppenheimer goes on to describe his fight with Mattel to give him any cooperation with the book, including a conversation with "one of Mattel's top corporate public relations people" whose first question "during a brief telephone conversation was 'Who's talking to you? Who's giving you information?' He wanted to take names, and the thought that ran through my journalistic mind was, give him names, and they'll most likely be looking for new jobs. Some months later, that same public relations official sent me a friendly e-mail announcing that he had left Mattel and joined another corporation." (pg 270)
Despite Mattel's "reluctance", Oppenheimer claims to have been able to interview "dozens upon dozens of people who were with Mattel virtually from the beginning to the present." (pg 270)
Too bad that doesn't really show up in this book. While I was hoping this book would tip the history in the other direction to even out the gilded Barbie and Ruth, it's just flat-out too sloppy, too poorly researched, and too biased to make a decent argument. Which is a shame, because it's something history deserves.
Notable: Whilst hunting for the text of the inside flap of the book to cut and paste so I wouldn't have to type it out (no such luck), I ran across a curious exchange on Amazon dot com involving Jerry Oppenheimer and the author of Barbie and Ruth, Robin Gerber. In the customer reviews section of Amazon's product page for Toy Monster, the following comment is left by Robin Gerber:
Your book must be really bad if you have to post bad reviews on other author's [sic] amazon sites to try to boost your book, Jerry. Feel free to call me if you would actually like to have an intelligent discussion rather than ranting on my amazon site under the fake name "Lerive Gauche." Or are you afraid to discuss the facts? As we both know, Ruth Handler not only created Barbie, but brought her to market and made her a global icon, not Jack Ryan. Women's History Month is an ironic time to be giving a man credit for a woman's accomplishments, don't you think? Feel free to read the true, research-based story in my book "BARBIE AND RUTH: THE STORY OF THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS DOLL AND THE WOMAN WHO CREATED HER." Signed, Robin Gerber.
Oppenheimer offers no comment in response (and who knows if he even read it?) and it would be interesting to know how he responses to these charges.
On a lesser note, in the chapter titled "From 'He-Man' to Home Depot", Oppenheimer relates the curious story of Nathan Bitner, the 11-year-old winner of the 1985 He-Man "Create-a-Character" contest. Bitner's winning entry, as it was announced in the spring 1986 issue of the official Masters of the Universe magazine, was an action figure named "Fearless Photog", whose head was a futuristic camera that could take snapshots (what?). In the same announcement, Mattel claimed to have awarded Nathan a $100,000 scholarship and "a five-day trip to California where he will spend one day as honorary president of Mattel." (pg 128) In a press release from the period, Mattel stated that it would produce Fearless Photog as part of the Masters toy line, but gave no mention as to when.
Now here's were it gets notable (and kind of creepy). Mattel apparently never produced the "Fearless Photog", something that "ignited a huge controversy and a swarm of conspiracy theories among the He-Man cognoscenti" (pg 128).
Years passed and "He-Man and Masters fans inundated related websites, criticizing Mattel for its failure to bring out the figure. Even in the new millennium, He-Man bloggers on such sites as X-Entertainment raised questions about Mattel, Fearless Photog, and Bitner himself.
"As late as the early-to-mid-2000s, the controversy over Fearless Photog and Mattel continued to rage online. Finally, Nathan Bitner surfaced. He had been in the videogame business, but also had had a sad life reportedly rife with personal and financial problems, as reported on message boards such as Big Brother Strikes Back on the Force.Net, and Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks blod. Bitner was last known to have been serving as a medic in the Army in Iraq.
"On Big Brother, the writer noted that 'Bitner's plight had become the stuff of legend in the action figure world... Obviously, Mattel bought off Nathan Bitner with the promise of education, but depriving the world of the Fearless Phototg... you've got to wonder if his life would have turned out differently if his dreams of the Fearless Photog would have come to life.'" (pg 128 and 129)
This seemed a little extreme and implausible to me. Hundreds, possibly thousands of Gen Xers still fuming two decades after a toy wasn't released? What exactly were the details of Bitner's "sad life reportedly rife with personal and financial problems"? I decided to investigate.
Nathan Bitner came up as a heavily researched name on Google and unlike much of the book, Oppenheimer's facts were correct. Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks Blog offers a retelling, including the story of "a diligent group of X-Entertainment readers who took it upon themselves to find out whatever happened to Nathan Bitner." Schuler goes on
"One of the readers posted a follow-up pointing out that someone named Nathan Bitner was one of the lead designers of the videogame Halo (1998; a story-based fighting game) for Bungie Software. Soon, other 'Nathan Bitner' Internet sightings were found: in one, he appeared to have left Bungie in 1999 to set up his own videogame company, Island Four; in another, he was posting thoughts about suicide on a newsgroup; in others, he had attended UNC Chapel Hill, or was serving in the U.S. military, possibly in Iraq.
"Then came a sordid tale, posted on a Halo message board, about the collapse of Island Four, and Bitner's bankruptcy, eviction, non-sexual involvement with a prostitute named 'Genesis' whom he hired as a concept artist, and mental illness. As reader Ed Franklin wrote, within hours of the original X-Entertainment posting, 'I think I've found out too much already. It seems obvious that he won the contest, got the scholarship, went to UNC Chapel Hill, worked at Bungie for a bit . . . quit Bungie to start his own company, flopped, then joined the army at age 28. That's more info than I have on some of my blood relatives.'
"Franklin's stripped down version of the tale turned out to be true, but the Nathan Bitner mystery began to take on a life of its own, especially after Franklin found an interview with Bitner elsewhere on the Internet in which the Island Four founder boasted, prophetically, 'Oh, yeah, and most importantly, I want a cult following.' The story was picked up by Matt Haughey's MetaFilter blog, drawing hundreds of readers to X-Entertainment to join in on the speculation, creating a humorous blog-thread of epic proportions (comprised of thousands of individual messages) and multiplying 'Bitner' references across the Web.
"Old friends, a disgruntled investor in Island Four, and several runners-up in the original He Man contest all made appearances on the Nathan Bitner thread of X-Entertainment over the next several months; there was a collection of Bitner haikus ('Paid hooker, no sex/ Screwed out of Fearless Photog/ That is so Bitner'); people claiming to be Bitner flamed in and were swiftly weeded out by the 'experts', and there was even one person who claimed to be Bitner's father who said that Bitner had died many years ago.'
Schuler notes Bitner's surprise appearance on the now famous X-Entertainment thread and provides a a link.
I skimmed much of the thread (it's awfully long, as you can imagine) and was a little chilled by the devotion of these people, particularly after Bitner appeared. The questions the, let's call them "enthusiasts", had for him were a little spooky, such as one from a poster with the name "Zappadog":
"What happened to the prorotype [sic], did they pay you, did you get to take that tour? So many questions…
A poster name "Aberration" enthused
"Wow. Six months and one week, and what many people had long ago declared an impossibility has now happened. Welcome to the X-E blog of you & Photog, Nathan Bitner! :)
I’m sure lots of us are glad that you finally said hello, despite your apprehension at first. It’s gratifying to know that this, for lack of a better word, phenomenon has reached you, and that you can have a good sense of humor about it, for the most part.
I’ll ask a couple of simple questions:
1. Can you tell us a little about the experience of winning the MOTU contest? Like, what kind of details go behind the scenes of those contests that we don’t know about? Did it gain you any extra fame at school? Any funny stories about the Disneyland trip?
2. I’m more than sure that your life is too busy for "kids’ stuff", but have you ever checked out the new He-Man toys or cartoon? Thoughts?
3. Ever jokingly think about contacting Mattel to finally get a Photog made? If you’re actually interested, here are some helpful links:
A list of Mattel addresses:
http://www.mattel.com/contact_us/default.asp
The "Four Horsemen", who design and sculpt most of the new line:
http://www.fourhorsemen.biz/contact.htm
And the head honcho of the He-Man line occasionally does Q&A at the boards of http://www.he-man.org/ You have to submit your questions on a special forum thread though, and I’m not sure if there’s one open right now. Might not hurt to post to their forum anyway, see if you can stir up some fan momentum.
I could think of questions all day, but this’ll be good for now. Again, thanks for posting, and come back soon! "
Why is this notable? Well, an obscure name from a contest remembered by hundreds (or, again, possibly thousands) of Gen-Xers was remembered well enough to haunt them to carry it into the age of the internet, to launch a massive search, to cast a seemingly ordinary kid into the stuff of (sort of) urban legend. I can somewhat understand the enthusiasm with Bitner's reveal and the obvious reason I think the interest in him grew was the bonds formed by members of the comms that speculated on his fate.
I always defend the internet as closer to "reality" (and getting closer every day) than people admit and that forgetting that is where problems start. However, this story seems to prove the theory of the internet being an entity unlike any other, a universe in and of itself where celebrities can be created with the flicker of a childhood memory and the access to a blog.
Or is it? Urban legends have existed long before, certainly. The story of "Mikey" and "pop rocks and coke" (to name just one) had entered the cultural lexicon before the internet was around to help.If nothing else, the legend of Nathan Bitner is ripe for examination of the impact of the internet and the ease of the role it plays in determining pop culture. If something else, it's possibly the stuff of a movie (albeit perhaps one made for TV).
Title: Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel by Jerry Oppenheimer
Details: Copyright 1999, Wiley
Synopsis (By Way of the Inside Flap): From Boise to Beijing, Mattel's toys dominate the universe. Its no-fun-and-games marketing muscles reaches some 140 countries, and its iconic products-- Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Chatty Cathy to name a few-- have been a part of our culture for generations.
Now, in this intriguing and entertaining exposé, New York Times best selling author Jerry Oppenheimer places the world's largest toy company under a journalistic microscope, uncovering the dark side of toy land, and exploring Mattel's oddball corporate culture and eccentric, often bizarre, cast of characters.
Based on exclusive interviews and an exhaustive review of public and private records Toy Monster exposes Mattel's take-no-prisoners, shark-infested corporate style. Throughout this scrupulously reported, unauthorized portrait, you'll discover how dangerous toys are actually nothing new to Mattel, and why its fearsomely litigious approach within the brutal toy business has helped their products dominate over potential rivals such as Bratz.
But this is only part of the story. Along the way, you'll become familiar with the larger-than-life personalities who have shaped Mattel's eccentric world. There's cofounder Ruth Handler, a "one-woman sales-merchandising-promotion-administrative force, a sort of industrial Orson Welles," who becomes a white-collar criminal. There's Jack Ryan, the "Father of Barbie," whose second of five wives calls him "a full-blown seventies-style swinger into wife-swapping and sundry sexual pursuits as a way of life." And don't forget CEO Robert Eckert, who came from the worlds of processed cheeses and hot dogs to lead Mattel-- only to get grilled by the U.S. Congress, and the world press, in the lead-paint-and-dangerous-magnets cause célèbre.
The phenomenal Barbie brand's 50th anniversary arrives in 2009, hot on the heels of the China Toy Terror recall scandal that has tarnished Mattel's image in the hearts and minds of millions of people worldwide. Toy Monster takes you inside the many scandals that have been a part of this company, and shows you why today's toy business is always fun and games.
Why I Wanted to Read It: This book was written about in Newsweek along with Barbie and Ruth as the "dueling biographies" of Barbie's origins that were released in honor of the doll's fiftieth anniversary. Barbie and Ruth was a book-long puff piece, applying a heavy layer of gloss to both the life of Ruth Handler and her creation and this book was supposed to be the antidote.
How I Liked It: From aforementioned Newsweek article (you can read it for yourself here), I was aware this was going to be a least a bit of a hatchet job from the name alone. Given how nauseating I found Barbie and Ruth, the idea sounded like a breath of fresh air.
Oppenheimer has several factors riding against him from the start. For one, he's well-known for his tabloid-esque tomes (taking down Martha Stewart in Just Desserts was arguably his most popular one to date) in the vein of Kitty Kelley, who indeed positively blurbs the book on the back cover. Also, in the Newsweek piece that brought my attention to what they call these "dueling biographies", he professes to having discovered "Barbie-gate".
The book starts off as enjoyable in a juicy, gossipy fashion, even as Oppenheimer's obvious bias against Ruth Handler and favor of a Mattel product designer who he claims was "Father of Barbie" (which gets increasingly annoying as he starts referring to him thusly rather than by his name), Jack Ryan. Oppenheimer agrees with the story of Ruth Handler envisioning an adult doll for little girls and finding a model for the doll she was told couldn't be built on a family vacation to Germany wherein she stumbles upon the quasi-pornographic gag gift, the Bild Lilli doll, a toy based on a naughty Germany comic strip character whose exploits were chronicled in the Bild-Zeitung, a trashy German tabloid which author M.G. Lord has compared to America's National Enquirer. However, once Barbie came into development, Oppenheimer claims Jack Ryan was the one (and the only one) to truly make the dream a reality. While this is by all known information factually inaccurate (Oppenheimer downplays the influence of fashion designer Charlotte Johnson, a central figure in repackaging Lilli into Barbie through the preciseness of her wardrobe; as well, he does not even mention Ernest Dichter, the seminal marketing strategist already legendary when the Handlers sought him out and without whom the Barbie doll would certainly not ever have done as well as it did on the American market or perhaps even been placed on the market at all), Oppenheimer's telling of Ryan's life story makes for a decent read, despite his aforementioned gushing bias.
Once Oppenheimer drifts out of Ryan's era however (this book covers Mattel's origins up to the present day), the book starts to flounder. Spotty information can be overlooked in favor of a good story, sure, but as the book wears on, Oppenheimer delivers more on the former than the latter. His extra pernicious prose regarding Handler and one time Mattel CEO Jill Barad are particularly tiresome, and suggest a waft of sexism. Oppenheimer claims Barad blamed her fall from Mattel in part on sexism, just as other corrupt women in power, such as Martha Stewart, did and have. While a degree of truth lies in Oppenheimer's scorn for Barad's playing of the gender card (in Forever Barbie, the brilliant, multi-faceted 1994 biography of the Barbie doll, Barad told author M.G. Lord in an interview that she did not define herself as a feminist, including the curious "I'm very female."), he portrays both Barad and Handler as emasculating (he notes Barad completely eclipsing her husband in business and his earning the name "Mr. Jill Barad" behind the couple's back), shrill, pompous stereotypes straight out of a Mommie Dearest version of Joan Crawford's interaction with any sort of business ("Don't FUCK with me, fellas!"). In contrast, Oppenheimer handles Jack Ryan's apparent misogyny with explanation. Ryan's continually held a harem of mistresses and wives whom he customized to his tastes with diet pills, plastic surgery (including facial reconstruction, breast augmentation, and a vaginoplasty for his third wife Linda Henson), and physical trainers when he felt necessary (he hired a trainer to develop Henson's calf muscles which involved three sessions weekly to meet Ryan's proclivity for "shapely legs"). The sad case of Linda Henson ended with her breakdown after Ryan continued to cheat on her, apparently driving her to drink heavily, put on weight, and "ruin her gorgeous figure". According to Oppenheimer, "[D]isgusted with Henson's body, Ryan divorced her after a relatively short, roller-coaster marriage." (pg 56) Henson tried to win him back by losing weight, refusing to eat altogether, finally refusing even water, and dying of a heart attack in her thirties brought on by the anorexia she had developed. Along with the disturbing and, in the case of Henson, tragic way he treated his sexual partners, Ryan threw "uninhibited parties" some of which including a "large phallus-shaped dial over the entrance with numbers from 1 to 10. When a woman entered the room, he had a cohort pull a cord that moved the dial up, stopping at a certain number that indicated how sexy she was, a 10 being va-va-voom. He called it the 'Peter Meter'." (pg 61) Despite all this, Oppenheimer insists that Ryan "had enormous respect for the intelligence of women. 'Women's work isn't given the proper value, and, as a result, they get angry,' [Ryan] espoused. 'More than that, they try to become amateur men. The thinking process of women is quite different from men, and we should recognize that-- and also recognize its probable superiority.'" (pg 52)
The book really loses itself by the time it reaches the 2007 recall scandals of lead poisoning and dangerous magnets. For the heart-breaking cases Oppenheimer shares of families that fell victim to the dangerously made magnets, he makes a sloppy mistake, referring repeatedly to the poorly made toy responsible as "Polly Pockets" rather than the correct "Polly Pocket". A seemingly minute mistake, but when one considers how extensively he covers (or claims to cover) the instances in which the toy almost killed several young children, you do have to wonder why he couldn't bother to get the name of the deadly culprit correct, particularly when he lambastes Mattel for not pulling them from the market sooner.
Finally he reaches possibly Mattel's most unsettling moment, the legal case over the only fashion doll to ever seriously threaten Mattel's most valuable asset, Barbie. He describes the origins of MGA's Bratz and their respective creators, as well as Mattel's dangerous and frequently corrupt litigious side (he shares that Bratz creator Isaac Larian received an anonymous letter to his office claiming that two named Mattel executives "have collaborated to spy on you and your family at your home and your children's school." The author or authors of the note have never been found, despite Larian's posting of the letter on the MGA website with a reward of $10,000 for information leading to the sender and proof that the accusations made were true). While the "Bratz vs Barbie" case has not yet reached its outcome, Oppenheimer ends the chapter (and thus the book) abruptly, something that almost ensures the book will not age well, particularly given its already sloppy style and loose relationship with facts.
He offers a final "Author's Note on Sources" in which he lauds his book as "the first objective and independent book about Mattel"(pg 265), he claims to have culled his information from the coverage on Mattel's various "[c]ontroversies, scandals, toy announcements-- everything from mundane quarterly earnings reports to front-page blockbusters-- have received coverage in daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines, and in recent years, on the Internet." (pg 266) He also cites his "firsthand interviews" as valuable to his writing "a cohesive, readable, and balanced story." (pg 266) He names several of the published sources, but only by title of the particular magazine or newspaper, never the exact article.
Oppenheimer then offers an extremely limited "selected bibliography" which consists of a mere ten books, three of them being Zsa Zsa Gabor(second wife of Jack Ryan)'s autobiography, his mistress Barbara Kerr's investigation of drug addiction Broken Places: Women Who Have Survived Drugs, and one time girlfriend Kay Redfield Jamison's psychiatric study Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, only two of which actually mention Jack Ryan.
Lastly, Oppenheimer gives a section of "Acknowledgments" where he states
"My goal was to paint an objective portrait of the world's largest toy company-- the House of Barbie, Hot Wheels, and many other toys that have brought joy to generations.
But from the start of my research, Mattel, to my surprise, declined to offer any assistance." (pg 269)
One wonders if he already had his title in place when he requested said interviews.
Oppenheimer goes on to describe his fight with Mattel to give him any cooperation with the book, including a conversation with "one of Mattel's top corporate public relations people" whose first question "during a brief telephone conversation was 'Who's talking to you? Who's giving you information?' He wanted to take names, and the thought that ran through my journalistic mind was, give him names, and they'll most likely be looking for new jobs. Some months later, that same public relations official sent me a friendly e-mail announcing that he had left Mattel and joined another corporation." (pg 270)
Despite Mattel's "reluctance", Oppenheimer claims to have been able to interview "dozens upon dozens of people who were with Mattel virtually from the beginning to the present." (pg 270)
Too bad that doesn't really show up in this book. While I was hoping this book would tip the history in the other direction to even out the gilded Barbie and Ruth, it's just flat-out too sloppy, too poorly researched, and too biased to make a decent argument. Which is a shame, because it's something history deserves.
Notable: Whilst hunting for the text of the inside flap of the book to cut and paste so I wouldn't have to type it out (no such luck), I ran across a curious exchange on Amazon dot com involving Jerry Oppenheimer and the author of Barbie and Ruth, Robin Gerber. In the customer reviews section of Amazon's product page for Toy Monster, the following comment is left by Robin Gerber:
Your book must be really bad if you have to post bad reviews on other author's [sic] amazon sites to try to boost your book, Jerry. Feel free to call me if you would actually like to have an intelligent discussion rather than ranting on my amazon site under the fake name "Lerive Gauche." Or are you afraid to discuss the facts? As we both know, Ruth Handler not only created Barbie, but brought her to market and made her a global icon, not Jack Ryan. Women's History Month is an ironic time to be giving a man credit for a woman's accomplishments, don't you think? Feel free to read the true, research-based story in my book "BARBIE AND RUTH: THE STORY OF THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS DOLL AND THE WOMAN WHO CREATED HER." Signed, Robin Gerber.
Oppenheimer offers no comment in response (and who knows if he even read it?) and it would be interesting to know how he responses to these charges.
On a lesser note, in the chapter titled "From 'He-Man' to Home Depot", Oppenheimer relates the curious story of Nathan Bitner, the 11-year-old winner of the 1985 He-Man "Create-a-Character" contest. Bitner's winning entry, as it was announced in the spring 1986 issue of the official Masters of the Universe magazine, was an action figure named "Fearless Photog", whose head was a futuristic camera that could take snapshots (what?). In the same announcement, Mattel claimed to have awarded Nathan a $100,000 scholarship and "a five-day trip to California where he will spend one day as honorary president of Mattel." (pg 128) In a press release from the period, Mattel stated that it would produce Fearless Photog as part of the Masters toy line, but gave no mention as to when.
Now here's were it gets notable (and kind of creepy). Mattel apparently never produced the "Fearless Photog", something that "ignited a huge controversy and a swarm of conspiracy theories among the He-Man cognoscenti" (pg 128).
Years passed and "He-Man and Masters fans inundated related websites, criticizing Mattel for its failure to bring out the figure. Even in the new millennium, He-Man bloggers on such sites as X-Entertainment raised questions about Mattel, Fearless Photog, and Bitner himself.
"As late as the early-to-mid-2000s, the controversy over Fearless Photog and Mattel continued to rage online. Finally, Nathan Bitner surfaced. He had been in the videogame business, but also had had a sad life reportedly rife with personal and financial problems, as reported on message boards such as Big Brother Strikes Back on the Force.Net, and Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks blod. Bitner was last known to have been serving as a medic in the Army in Iraq.
"On Big Brother, the writer noted that 'Bitner's plight had become the stuff of legend in the action figure world... Obviously, Mattel bought off Nathan Bitner with the promise of education, but depriving the world of the Fearless Phototg... you've got to wonder if his life would have turned out differently if his dreams of the Fearless Photog would have come to life.'" (pg 128 and 129)
This seemed a little extreme and implausible to me. Hundreds, possibly thousands of Gen Xers still fuming two decades after a toy wasn't released? What exactly were the details of Bitner's "sad life reportedly rife with personal and financial problems"? I decided to investigate.
Nathan Bitner came up as a heavily researched name on Google and unlike much of the book, Oppenheimer's facts were correct. Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks Blog offers a retelling, including the story of "a diligent group of X-Entertainment readers who took it upon themselves to find out whatever happened to Nathan Bitner." Schuler goes on
"One of the readers posted a follow-up pointing out that someone named Nathan Bitner was one of the lead designers of the videogame Halo (1998; a story-based fighting game) for Bungie Software. Soon, other 'Nathan Bitner' Internet sightings were found: in one, he appeared to have left Bungie in 1999 to set up his own videogame company, Island Four; in another, he was posting thoughts about suicide on a newsgroup; in others, he had attended UNC Chapel Hill, or was serving in the U.S. military, possibly in Iraq.
"Then came a sordid tale, posted on a Halo message board, about the collapse of Island Four, and Bitner's bankruptcy, eviction, non-sexual involvement with a prostitute named 'Genesis' whom he hired as a concept artist, and mental illness. As reader Ed Franklin wrote, within hours of the original X-Entertainment posting, 'I think I've found out too much already. It seems obvious that he won the contest, got the scholarship, went to UNC Chapel Hill, worked at Bungie for a bit . . . quit Bungie to start his own company, flopped, then joined the army at age 28. That's more info than I have on some of my blood relatives.'
"Franklin's stripped down version of the tale turned out to be true, but the Nathan Bitner mystery began to take on a life of its own, especially after Franklin found an interview with Bitner elsewhere on the Internet in which the Island Four founder boasted, prophetically, 'Oh, yeah, and most importantly, I want a cult following.' The story was picked up by Matt Haughey's MetaFilter blog, drawing hundreds of readers to X-Entertainment to join in on the speculation, creating a humorous blog-thread of epic proportions (comprised of thousands of individual messages) and multiplying 'Bitner' references across the Web.
"Old friends, a disgruntled investor in Island Four, and several runners-up in the original He Man contest all made appearances on the Nathan Bitner thread of X-Entertainment over the next several months; there was a collection of Bitner haikus ('Paid hooker, no sex/ Screwed out of Fearless Photog/ That is so Bitner'); people claiming to be Bitner flamed in and were swiftly weeded out by the 'experts', and there was even one person who claimed to be Bitner's father who said that Bitner had died many years ago.'
Schuler notes Bitner's surprise appearance on the now famous X-Entertainment thread and provides a a link.
I skimmed much of the thread (it's awfully long, as you can imagine) and was a little chilled by the devotion of these people, particularly after Bitner appeared. The questions the, let's call them "enthusiasts", had for him were a little spooky, such as one from a poster with the name "Zappadog":
"What happened to the prorotype [sic], did they pay you, did you get to take that tour? So many questions…
A poster name "Aberration" enthused
"Wow. Six months and one week, and what many people had long ago declared an impossibility has now happened. Welcome to the X-E blog of you & Photog, Nathan Bitner! :)
I’m sure lots of us are glad that you finally said hello, despite your apprehension at first. It’s gratifying to know that this, for lack of a better word, phenomenon has reached you, and that you can have a good sense of humor about it, for the most part.
I’ll ask a couple of simple questions:
1. Can you tell us a little about the experience of winning the MOTU contest? Like, what kind of details go behind the scenes of those contests that we don’t know about? Did it gain you any extra fame at school? Any funny stories about the Disneyland trip?
2. I’m more than sure that your life is too busy for "kids’ stuff", but have you ever checked out the new He-Man toys or cartoon? Thoughts?
3. Ever jokingly think about contacting Mattel to finally get a Photog made? If you’re actually interested, here are some helpful links:
A list of Mattel addresses:
http://www.mattel.com/contact_us/default.asp
The "Four Horsemen", who design and sculpt most of the new line:
http://www.fourhorsemen.biz/contact.htm
And the head honcho of the He-Man line occasionally does Q&A at the boards of http://www.he-man.org/ You have to submit your questions on a special forum thread though, and I’m not sure if there’s one open right now. Might not hurt to post to their forum anyway, see if you can stir up some fan momentum.
I could think of questions all day, but this’ll be good for now. Again, thanks for posting, and come back soon! "
Why is this notable? Well, an obscure name from a contest remembered by hundreds (or, again, possibly thousands) of Gen-Xers was remembered well enough to haunt them to carry it into the age of the internet, to launch a massive search, to cast a seemingly ordinary kid into the stuff of (sort of) urban legend. I can somewhat understand the enthusiasm with Bitner's reveal and the obvious reason I think the interest in him grew was the bonds formed by members of the comms that speculated on his fate.
I always defend the internet as closer to "reality" (and getting closer every day) than people admit and that forgetting that is where problems start. However, this story seems to prove the theory of the internet being an entity unlike any other, a universe in and of itself where celebrities can be created with the flicker of a childhood memory and the access to a blog.
Or is it? Urban legends have existed long before, certainly. The story of "Mikey" and "pop rocks and coke" (to name just one) had entered the cultural lexicon before the internet was around to help.If nothing else, the legend of Nathan Bitner is ripe for examination of the impact of the internet and the ease of the role it plays in determining pop culture. If something else, it's possibly the stuff of a movie (albeit perhaps one made for TV).
