Hey Moms!

Is your daughter starting to reach that special age, that magical time between when her adult teeth have grown in but no secondary sexual characteristics have? 

Are you looking for the perfect role model for your little girl, the friend who will never let her down, the one who will never be prettier or threaten to diminish her self-esteem?  The one who will dress conservatively and look polite for all eternity?

Have you ever considered mummifying your daughter to preserve her innocence, but found state and federal laws too constricting?

Then you might just be interested in a MyTwinn (the just-like-me doll)!

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Easily the creepiest thing I’ve seen on the internet since the Fleshlight, MyTwinn dolls are custom made to your (and by “your”, MyTwinn is very specific in meaning “affluent moms’”) specifications.  Everything from the clothes right down to the number of freckles can be specifically ordered, processed and hand-painted by a MyTwinn artist, in order to produce a doll that is an exact plastic duplicate of your daughter.

Let’s check out the sales pitch:

Ooooookay, who wants to start? Me? Nobody has a comment? All right then.

On the surface, there isn’t anything wrong with what MyTwinn is selling.  The sane, logical Arial copy explains the process in straightforward brochure-style sales-speak, detailing their process while promising beauty, personalized service and craftsmanship.  One might find the same kind of promises for model airplanes, or hand-made jewellery.

No, it’s the other promises — the ones injected in random super-pink handwritten font — that expose the evil at work here:

  • “She’s special, like me!” = “Thanks Mom, for investing me with self-esteem and positive values!  This simulacrum shows me how much you value me as a child!”
  • “Her hair looks just like mine” = “Though I am special, it comforts me that someone else looks just like me, Mom!  Also your eye for detail tells me how much you really care!  I forgive you for struggling to split your life between home and career, Mom!”
  • “Look Mom, she even has my freckles!” = “By seeing my freckles on a doll, you have turned my negative into a positive, Mom!  I doubt I’ll ever scrub furiously at my face again, sobbing angrily about what the girls at school say about how I look like I was shot in the face!  See how I appreciate the details you were upsold into spending extra money on, Mom?  I value how hard you work to afford stuff for us goddamned kids!”

It’s one thing to sell weird lookalike dolls, but it’s creepy to sell them to Moms, and it’s downright freaky to do it in the imagined voice of their soon-to-be-grateful daughters.  I know that parents are the actual buyers for toys — I have a nephew, I see what my sister goes through — but the fiction that everyone subscribes to is that toys are actually for the kids.  Here is the five-step, commonly-accepted toy concept flow:

  1. Toy company
  2. Marketing firm
  3. Commercial advertising
  4. Child
  5. Soon-impoverished parent

Yes, parents buy the toys that they want their kids to play with, or enroll them in the sports they want their kids to play, or force them into the dance/song/arts they want their kids to be good at.  We get that, and generally speaking we as a society acknowledge that it is both common practice and psychotic.  Toymakers oblige them by marketing directly to children, trading off the nuisance of having to buy Yu-Gi-Oh in exchange for the privelege of foisting magic kits, train sets or telescopes on their kids as well.

MyTwinn, instead, does two things:

  1. Preys directly on mothers who can’t think of a better way to bond with their daughters than modeling them in precise miniature;
  2. Simulates a world in which 7 and 8 year-old girls care about hand-craftsmanship or keepsakes for tomorrow.

On the one hand, this is so optimistic that it’s heartbreaking; on the other, this is so weird that it’s heartbreaking.  Are there kids out there who are really thrilled when they’re confronted with a plasticized body double?  Are there parents who really expect to hear things like, “She’s special, like me!”?

Apparently there are:  “My daughter, Kara, received her MyTwinn doll for Christmas. Kara just stared at her in amazement.  She was so happy…” (emphasis mine)

Yeah-huh.  I doubt she had the words.

Incidentally, Dads (or Moms with no other recourse), MyTwinn hasn’t forgotten about you.  Whatever your race, color, creed or size, MyTwinn is ready to help build an exact duplicate of your son… as long as he’s a gay disco queen with baseball-themed pants.

Final rating:

THREE OUT OF FIVE SCREAMS OF HORROR