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• Fisher-Price Wants to Hire Your Kid

  Dust off your kid's resume because Fisher-Price is hiring. Not just hiring either, but they're looking to add kids onto their board. Attractive skills include leadership qualities, human resources, project management, sales skills and creativity in design or concept, with a total of six kids being hired. Five-year-old Saige Bayne is the first hire, snapped up due to her drawing and design skills. So what's going on here? In a ploy to corner the toy market and attempt world domination make lots and lots of money, Fisher-Price is recruiting kids to establish sort of an in-house focus group so as to better exploit market to their target audience. So yeah, while it would be a hell of a lot of fun to be the next "Big" and help design toys and play with them all day (oops, I'm talking about me here, but I'm sure it would be fun for kids too), I'm a little concerned about the exploitative nature of this proposition. Not that Fisher-Price is the first to employ this brilliant idea; focus groups have long been used to better hone product lines that in turn sell more products and therefore make the company more money. But in the excitement of being a part of new-toy development, do these kids realize they're being used? You have to live in Australia to be eligible, though, so it cuts me and my kids right out of contention. Oh well, we'll have to find total world domination another way. Posted Jul 15 2007, 02:23 PM by Karen Murphy with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: toys, marketing, Australian, Fisher-Price

• This Here's a Story 'bout a Kid Named Hell

  What could a five year old do to get barred from Catholic school? Have a name like Max Hell. It isn't his stage name either (even though it sounds pretty cool). Max Hell is his birth name. His father is named Alex Hell. It is their family name. In Melbourne, Australia a priest refused to enroll the little boy in  St. Peter the Apostle school because of his name. The school said Max could enroll only if he used his mother's maiden name. Sadly, his mother's maiden name wasn't Fuck Off.  I say a guy with a name like Max Hell don't need no education. He can just form the youngest black metal band in Australia. That would rule.  Posted Jul 12 2007, 06:58 PM by Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: Australian, hell, catholic school, Max Hell, melbourne

• Pregnant Aussies Drink Up

  Pregnant and enjoy an occasional drink? In Australia, you are apparently in good company.  Researchers at Perth's Telethon Institute  interviewed 5,000 12 weeks after delivery.  Of those interviewed, nearly half reported drinking during pregnancy, but many did so because the pregancies were unplanned. The researchers focused on alcohol consumption during the 3 months prior to pregancy and during each trimester.  The study found a correlation between the percentage of pregnancies that were unplanned (47%) and the percentage of pregnant women who reported drinking during the 1st trimester (58%).  The number of women consuming more than 2 drinks per day declined in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters.  Overall, 15% of women drank outside the current Australian guideline for alcohol consumption in pregnancy.  Unlike the American Medical Assocation, which recommends eliminating all alcohol consumption during pregnancy, the Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council recommends 'limited' usage. When it comes to pregnancy and drinking, the mainstream American approach seems to favor shaming and excoriation (remember Rachel Weisz?). But even in laid back Aussie land, the issue is still hot button.  Any way you look at it, drinking and pregnancy will always be a divisive issue, and government rules on the topic appear to hold little sway. Posted Jan 30 2007, 07:46 AM by Rachael Brownell (Redsy) with | with no comments Filed under: pregnancy, Rachel Weisz, alcohol consumption during pregnancy, unplanned pregnancy, Aussie, Australian