Monday, April 29, 2024

Playing the Blame Game and Dolls



ICYMI, a lot of Barbie dolls are now made in Indonesia, and less from China. This did not prevent Chinese sellers from offering Barbie dolls at competitive prices. I recently bought a Barbie Looks doll from a Chinese seller (not from any local seller) because the price was unbeatable.

How can Chinese businesses offer cheaper prices for the same item? No, it's not because they sell knock-offs! Their government subsidizes favored businesses allowing them to sell their goods for less. If this continues, local sellers, especially the official local distributor (Richwell aka Richprime aka KidsCompany) might suffer. Not only does the Philippine government offer little to no subsidies, the government also tax imported goods (even if they have no direct local competition) making Barbie's more expensive. The local SRP of a Barbie Looks doll is a little over US$50.

If I have to buy from Richwell, I wait for the sale season or maybe after a year after the release. They usually offer huge discounts by then. Barbie's popularity has declined despite the movie, sellers still have stocks years after the initial release. 


Of course, you can't blame the local sellers for selling at a high price. They got it for a high price as well. In the same manner, you can't blame buyers who buy from China since they want to get the best value out of their hard-earned money. I blame the government but I wouldn't expect most doll collectors to agree.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Surveillance capitalism

That's one reason why I don't use popular social media as much as I used to.

Sites owned by Google, Meta, X, and others collect user information, like behavior patterns and user interests. They use this information to keep feeding you information you are most likely to be interested in. Sounds nice, so far, right? 

Wait until you learn what they do to that information.

They can sell it to others who can use the information to package something you don't like with something you like, making you open to that thing you don't like. As you get more and more exposed to it, you'll start to question yourself if your not liking it was even valid.

Example: You like stand-up comedy. You don't like sexist jokes.

Posts on stand-up comedy get pushed into your feed. The sites test how you react to different levels/kinds of sexist jokes. Maybe you're a person of color, so jokes on dumb blondes don't affect you as much. Since the dumb blonde jokes are packaged with other jokes, you like the post. Maybe you're from the working class, so you like a content with a joke on privileged clueless women, regardless of their race.  It has other LOL jokes, so you hit the heart icon. The sites can run different tests on you and eventually you might realize that some women deserve to be laughed at.

They split hair with your value system and find ways to control you. They affect your purchasing behavior. (You didn't buy the last doll if you haven't seen it in some social media content.) They affect how you choose your government leaders.  They desensitize you, or worse, make you oblivious to on-going war crimes.

Fediverse: The Alternative

Recently, I discovered the decentralized social media sites. How do I describe it? It's like X but all other letters are involved (for illustration purposes: A to Z). Y registered users can interact with the posts from A to Z sites(aka server, aka instance). Y users don't have to make an account on the other sites as long as the other sites are federated with the Y site. 

The cool thing is that any person with enough programming skills and material resources can set up a site. The sad thing is that a malicious character can do the same and set up a malicious site. The good thing is that any site can defederate from the problematic sites, meaning the problematic sites cannot access the other sites. The best thing is not one entity/corporation is in control of all the data and user information.

Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter/X, while PixelFed is an alternative to Instagram. Everything in the fediverse is in the early stage, lacking other features from popular sites. Aside from the confusing initial choice of server/site in which to set up an account, there is also the initial lack of feed since it's hard to find a sub-niche interest in an already niche set-up. Once you find and interact with people having the same interests as you, you'll get the ball rolling.

I'm just glad that there's an alternative to the popular social media sites. For now, most of my doll posts will be in the fediverse.

Here's a glimpse of a doll content from a Mastodon intance of the fediverse.




Saturday, February 3, 2024

Are these sweatshop doll clothes?


I got these from China (thru a version of AliExpress), that's one. The prices are cheap, I can't help think that some slave labor is involved. The quality of the pieces are better than the current playline Barbie clothes.

If these came from sweatshops, am I  a bad person for supporting an entity that exploits human labor? Also, these came from a country that is aggressively encroaching on our national territory. Does that make me twice as bad?

A course on "Wealth and Poverty" from Robert Reich posted on YouTube helped me answer some of my questions. I'm sharing it here as it may help you, too.


Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Marvel Epic Hero Series Action Figure (4 inch)

 



I've been seeing the new 4-inch action figure from Hasbro, but as a Marvel Universe collector, the limited articulation and the higher price kept me away. I reconsidered after they were made available at discounted prices. I'm also tempted to buy the X-men '97 from this series but I wanted to try an actual toy from this line before I start collecting the team. This is how I reached my decision for the X-men team.

What I like:


- They are smaller than the Marvel Universe figures, so for other characters, the shorter figure seems more appropriate, like for Miles Morales. The size of Mantis seems okay with the old 4-inch figures.


- Clean paint details.

- Minimal plastic used in packaging is more environment-friendly.

- Widely available. No need to deal with scalpers. I HATE scalpers.


What I don't like:


- The limited articulation doesn't go well with acrobatic characters.

- The suggested retail price is not appealing. Spin Master has a similarly scaled and articulated superhero figures but they offer it at lower prices.

- With Spin Master and Mattel, moving their toy manufacturing plants out of China, this Hasbro toy line is still made in China.

Forecast:

I don't think this toy line will last long. There are other lines for collectors. Those who will start collecting this won't probably complete a whole team.  If I try to collect the X-men, I'd be disappointed if I don't get Jubilee and Prof. X. Plus, some figures won't work with my older X-men collection.

Except for the Spider-verse series, I haven't been liking the new Marvel related movies. I'm kinda done with Marvel these days. I'm just triggered by the nostalgia for the upcoming X-men '97 series.


Conclusion:

I won't be collecting this toy line, but if an interesting stand alone character (that can fit in my existing Marvel Universe collection) comes up at a discounted price, I will cherry-pick. As for the the X-men '97, I might try customizing. Other collectors are disposing their Marvel Universe collection and I can buy them cheap to be customized.