CH — LARRY ROMANOFF — 珍视的美国品牌 — December 01, 2021

 

珍视的美国品牌

拉里·罗诺夫  宝贵的美国品牌  

译者：珍珠

2021年12月1日

 

 

拉里·罗诺夫 2021年11月30日《俄罗斯真理报》

非西方世界需要在抵制美国“价值观”方面取得一些成功，首先是一些美国偶像。

Barbie and Pornography

芭比娃娃与色情

首先要注意的是，美泰公司的芭比娃娃已经死了，至少在中国是这样。“美泰的芭比娃娃在她4000平方米的六层上海专卖店里住了两年后，即将搬走。”据分析人士称，梦之家已经正式关闭，这是因为芭比娃娃在大城市的中国购物者中并不那么受欢迎。美泰花费巨资开设了这家现已关闭的旗舰店。很好的解脱了。人们说中国人喜欢面子，但听美泰的话：昂贵的上海芭比专卖店“只是为了在中国建立芭比品牌。它成功地做到了这一点，所以是时候继续前进了。”没错

对于你们这些不知道的人来说，芭比娃娃从来就不是为儿童设计的。芭比娃娃是一种名为“莉莉”的性玩具，20世纪50年代在瑞士设计，在欧洲主要受变态单身男子的欢迎。当时，一位名叫露丝·汉德勒的犹太妇女和她的丈夫在德国度假，她当时拥有一家名为“美泰玩具”的小公司。她显然爱上了这个洋娃娃，将它带到美国，并开始将其作为“探索女性身份”的小女孩的“更成熟”的玩具进行营销。

IT — LARRY ROMANOFF — Marchi americani preziosi — December 01, 2021

 

Marchi americani preziosi

Larry Romanoff, February 21, 2021

Tradotto da Elvia Politi per Saker Italia

CHINESE   ENGLISH   ITALIAN   PORTUGUESE

 

Il mondo non-occidentale ha bisogno di alcuni rifiuti ben riusciti ai “valori” americani, a cominciare da alcune icone americane.

 

Barbie e pornografia

 

Il primo di questi casi è il dato di fatto che la Barbie della Mattel è morta, almeno in Cina. “Dopo due anni di vita nel suo palazzo di Shanghai di 4.000 metri quadrati su sei piani, la Barbie della Mattel si sta trasferendo”. La casa dei sogni ha ufficialmente chiuso e, secondo gli analisti, la ragione è che la Barbie non ha avuto successo tra i clienti cinesi in questa grande città. Mattel ha speso moltissimo per aprire questo flagship store che ora ha chiuso i battenti. Finalmente. Si dice che i Cinesi amino salvare la faccia ma sentite cosa dice la Mattel: il costosissimo negozio di Barbie di Shanghai “serviva solo a portare il marchio Barbie in Cina. Ha avuto successo, quindi è il momento di andare avanti”. Giusto.

Per chi non lo sa, Barbie non è mai stata pensata per i bambini.

Barbie era un giocattolo sessuale di nome “Lilli” progettata in Svizzera negli anni ’50 e popolare soprattutto tra i single pervertiti d’Europa.

In quel periodo, una donna ebrea di nome Ruth Handler, che, insieme al marito, era la proprietaria dell’allora piccola azienda di giocattoli Mattel, era in vacanza in Germania: a quanto pare, si è innamorata di questa bambola, l’ha portata negli Stati Uniti, e ha cominciato a commercializzarla come un giocattolo “più maturo” per le bambine “che esplorano la femminilità”.

EN -- LARRY ROMANOFF -- Treasured American Brands -- December 01, 2021

Treasured American Brands

By Larry Romanoff for Pravda, 01 December 2021

 

The non-Western world needs a few successes in rejecting American "values", beginning with some American icons.

 

Barbie and Pornography

 

The first of these is to note that Mattel's Barbie is dead, at least in China. “After two years of living in her 4,000 square meter, six-story Shanghai mansion, Mattel’s Barbie doll is moving out.” The dream house has officially closed and, according to analysts, it’s because Barbie didn’t quite cut it with Chinese shoppers in the big city. Mattel spent hugely to open that flagship store that has now closed its doors. And good riddance. People say that the Chinese like to save face, but listen to Mattel: The hugely-expensive Shanghai Barbie store was "meant only to establish Barbie’s brand in China. It did that successfully, so it's time to move on." Right.

 

For those of you who don't know, Barbie was never intended for children. Barbie was a sex toy named 'Lilli' that was designed in Switzerland in the 1950s and was popular primarily with perverted single men in Europe. At the time, a Jewish woman named Ruth Handler, who with her husband, owned the then-small company named Mattel toys, was on holiday in Germany and apparently fell in love with this doll, brought it to the US and began marketing it as a "more mature" toy for little girls "exploring womanhood".

Most mothers were either disturbed or horrified by this, especially since Barbie's "mature" body was essentially "borderline pornographic" and was seen as a serious danger and "potentially damaging to young girls' psyches". That view is still held very strongly by millions of mothers all over the world who have banned this doll from their homes.

But Handler, like all Jewish marketers, brought in psychiatrists to learn how to change the values of American mothers in order to market this doll. The advice was to instruct mothers to consider Barbie as "a tool for teaching their daughters about the importance of appearance and femininity." And the importance of promiscuous sex as a way of life. Just what every 3 year-old girl needed to help her grow up into a wholesome young woman - a plastic doll with big breasts and a sports car. I have always hated that doll.

 

Swarovski "crystal"

 

Swarovski is another hugely successful lipstick-on-a-pig branding exercise, a Jewish-European firm that began life as a small company making cheap costume jewelry. Interestingly, they then used their accumulated knowledge of glass to make excellent optics for binoculars and telescopes. In the 1970s and 1980s, Swarovski binoculars were widely recognised for their high quality. The imagining and marketing of their "crystal" costume jewelry is a relatively recent development.

 

In the real world of gemstones, "crystal" refers to natural quartz, a common mineral that naturally grows in crystalline shapes and, like many natural stones, produces some truly beautiful colors. In natural crystal, the atoms are arranged in a highly-ordered structure, forming a crystal lattice that we see in diamonds, sapphires and snowflakes. Most other elements have no structure at all, items like melted wax or plastic - or glass.

 

Swarovski "crystals", on the other hand, are not "crystal", they are not natural, they are not stone, they are not "pearls", and they are certainly not "gemstones". Swarovski's so-called crystals are glass. Plain, ordinary, cheap, glass.

 

Normal glass has a low index of refraction but some glass has about 32% lead metal (Pb) added to it, which makes it heavy and gives the glass a high refractive index so that it disperses colors well and produces a pretty kind of 'rainbow' effect. Manufacturers often call this "glass crystal" or just "crystal", but it is only glass, and is used primarily for cheap costume jewelry and some kinds of glassware, the weight suggesting quality and the light refraction producing colorful appeal.

 

The irritating fad surrounding Swarovski and their mythical crystals is nothing more than clever marketing, with people paying ridiculous sums of money for grossly overpriced and fragile costume jewelry made of cheap glass. For the prices paid for many of Swarovski's products, one can easily purchase genuine semi-precious stones.

 

Swarovski company advertising tells us, "The company's name has become synonymous with genuine crystal." Yes, and that's the problem, because Swarovski have so heavily advertised their glass costume jewelry as 'crystal', leading most people to believe they are purchasing some kind of natural, genuine gemstone. But all they are getting, is glass. The designs may be pretty, but it's still just cheap, ordinary glass.

Nescafé

 

And last, but not least, people everywhere need to know that Nescafé is not coffee. It is nothing. Less than nothing. Nescafé is 'instant coffee', which is a chemically freeze-dried concoction designed for Americans and others who have no taste. These products are almost always made from the lowest-grade and cheapest coffee available (and often including everything from chicory to dried peas) and, like Starbucks, infused with chemicals and flavorings to disguise their bad taste. In a stunning tribute to the power of marketing, Nescafé in China or Russia sometimes costs ten times the price of that in Western supermarkets.

 

It's a particular tragedy to me that anyone in China might have developed a taste for this awful stuff. At Chinese New Year, I see people on the streets carrying gift boxes of Nescafé. I can hardly think of a greater insult. In the West, instant coffee is a cheap and undesirable commodity that has about the same social status as a box of tissues or a can of bug spray, nothing that even the mentally defective would offer as a gift. For my friends in China and Russia, either introduce your friends to real coffee, or buy something else.

 

And, just so you know, the Nescafé brand is owned by Nestlé, the same people who bring you grossly-overpriced Häagen-Dazs ice cream and millions of dead babies in Africa.

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This article appeared first at Pravda

 

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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

 

His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/ and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

 

Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Moon of Shanghai, Blue Moon of Shanghai, 2021