Does the Bernie Madoff doll (or action figure) trivialize his scam victims?
By Darren Garnick | Related entries in Bad Decisions, Bailouts, Corporate Business, Crazy, Culture, Disasters, Economy, WTF?
Bernie Madoff scam artist action figure
In this economy, would you pay $149.99 for a Bernie Madoff action figure?
Would your answer be influenced if you knew it was a limited edition action figure?
Herobuilders.com is no stranger to controversy, brazenly giving G.I. Joe collectors the meanest enemies possible to wage war on — Saddam, Osama, Hugo Chavez. Without bad guys, who are the good guys gonna fight, right?
But as brash toymaker Emil Vicale tells the Boston Herald, not everyone wants real-world evil (corrupt CEOs like Lex Luthor are fine) represented in the playroom.
“Everything we do offends somebody,†he says. “If you are looking for a company not to offend somebody, it’s not us.â€
(Darren Garnick, who has an Apollo Creed bobblehead on his desk, can be reached at www.cultureschlock.com)
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 and is filed under Bad Decisions, Bailouts, Corporate Business, Crazy, Culture, Disasters, Economy, WTF?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
It should work well for the voodoo doll niche market.
January 30th, 2009 at 8:47 am
It trivializes the whole episode. But so what? If you didn’t lose any money, then this story really just becomes trivia. Time passes. What was the name of that guy who ripped off all those people? And so it goes.
Who buys a Madoff doll for $149? Probably virtually no one. But who posts a story about a $149 Madoff doll and provides a link to the web site? You, for one. All marketing folks are pure opportunists. if you have scruples, you are in the wrong business.
So think about this, Darren. You just helped some unscrupulous opportunists get more traffic for their silly doll web site. Every person who reads your post, clicks through, and finds some other silly doll to buy is a victory for thse opportunists, and a loss for folks who moralize about the trivialization of sad news stories as though trivialization was an optional feature in the 21st century and not a default setting.
February 21st, 2009 at 6:18 am
90 year old man in Florida lost $700K to this *sshole. Poor man has to bag groceries now to survive. Lost his retirement!
Madoff is SCUM!