Group grinds teeth at Real Tooth Fairies
Commercial campaign ‘a new low’
A campaign to “save the tooth fairy” is prompting a passionate public response, as high-profile toy executives move to monetize childhood’s beloved dental diva.
The Real Tooth Fairies are amplechested, micro-waisted beauties with legs for days and bejewelled crowns perched atop ’80s prom hair. Imagine if the Disney Princesses gave up their kingdoms for the Las Vegas stage and you get the idea.
The brainchild of Howard Bollinger, a former senior vice-president at Hasbro, and his wife Marilyn, a noted toy consultant and author of 30 Disney books, the children’s brand is being targeted by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood for being “an amalgam of all the worst trends in the toy industry.”
“This is a new low,” said Susan Linn, director of the CCFC and an instructor at Harvard University. “What this company wants to do is commercialize a biologically compelled event that, up until now, has been the purview of family tradition and a child’s imagination.”
The Real Tooth Fairies hits on almost every gender stereotype, with cheerleading, singing, makeovers, organizing fashion shows and acting listed among the pixies’ respective hobbies.
Less controversially, they spend their days encouraging global kindness and promoting the same behaviour in children. The website features a program in which girls acquire virtual charms as they work their way through 48 acts of kind- ness aimed at “building character and bringing families together.”
Boys, meanwhile, are visited by The Time Travel Elffs, a muscled group of unitard-wearing repo men who carry such tools as a chain whip and pirate sabre to claim children’s teeth.
A sales video obtained by the CCFC and publicized on their site in recent days (it was removed by YouTube on Friday, due to copyright) is described by Linn as “a real testimony to the greed of the toy industry.” In it, former Disney executive and current Fandango president Paul Yanover praises The Real Tooth Fairies for capitalizing on the widely beloved, long-unlicensed children’s icon.
“Kids are going to lose many teeth over the course of several years, and each tooth is really a holiday moment. I think about the opportunities that that creates, from gifting to greeting cards to collecting,” said Yanover.
A female voice-over then notes that with 10 million U.S. girls losing 20 teeth each, it adds up to 200 million biologically guaranteed “Tooth Fairy moments” — a stat accompanied by the repeated cha-ching of a cash register.