Several months ago, I noticed that the Canadian version of Upsy Daisy was white, not black. The doll based on the popular “In the Night Garden” children’s show appeared a lot lighter than usual on Canadian store shelves. See my original post for photos of white Upsy Daisy.

Well, it seems that the UK press has picked up on the doll’s racial conversion, and the BBC has agreed to replace the doll with a darker version.

The Guardian: BBC Gives ‘Too White’ TV Doll a Darker Face

and

BBC: BBC Acts over Light-Skinned Doll

If you’ve watched the BBC kids’s show “In The Night Garden,” you’ll recognize the video below:

Warning: it’s a bit freaky unless you’re a toddler I guess it must make sense to them.

You’ll notice that one of the characters on the show is a black doll named “Upsy Daisy” — she has awesome colourful hair and dances around quite a bit.

I looked for a place to order a set of In The Night Garden toys for Xavier, and I found a UK site that would ship them to Canada. Well now they are starting to appear in Canadian stores, such as Wal-Mart and Zellers (and presumably other toy stores as well).

Well, here’s the weird thing. The Canadian version of Upsy Daisy is white. Here’s a shot from the local Zellers:

Compare that to this version:

and a couple of screenshots from the TV show:

That second screenshot is telling, because you can see that she’s a lot darker than Makka Pakka. Yet in the Canadian doll version, she’s the same colour.

So what’s going on here? Did they think that a black doll wouldn’t sell in Canada (or is it North America?) Or is just hard to find the right colour material to make a black doll?

If you do an Google image search: http://images.google.com/images?q=upsy%20daisy you’ll find both black and white dolls. Here’s a UK store selling a black one: http://www.tishtashtoys.com/image.htm?tttid=MG002

Tags: upsydaisy black, video

Rick Mercer on Portuguese deportations.

I hope they send me back soon. I could use a vacation.

The characters on Battlestar Galactica use the word Frack instead of the usual other four-letter word. I guess this is how they can swear and still get by the censors.

Well, it turns out that Frack is actually a Swedish word. According to an online translator, it means “audacious, shameless, impudent.”

And, of course, IKEA has a product named “FRÄCK” — a bathroom mirror on a folding arm:

In what must be some sort of inside joke among the Galactica cast and crew, this Frack mirror can be found in Adama’s bathroom:

Fracking coincidence?

Jesse Jackson hosted Saturday Night Live on October 20th, 1984. One of the skits was of a gameshow called “The Question is Moot.” I don’t know why, but I always found it really funny.

A couple of nights ago, my TiVo recorded this episode, so I thought I’d grab this video clip and post it here.

[update!] The youtube clip doesn’t exist anymore, but you can still view the video here:

http://menino.com/mirror/question-is-moot.mov