Tiny Tears - Cherish the tears.

Like the "Disappointment" plate of last week, this ad for "Tiny Tears" addresses the human mother instinct that delights in the misery of children. She cries like a real baby. One would think that, when you sat down to design an idealized child, the first thing to go on the cutting room floor is the wailing and leaking of various fluids. Guess not. I'm a shitty mother.
Remember when Marge Simpson was feeling aimless and bored? I think it was when Homer got a job at GloboChem, and all Marge's chores were taken care of by the robotic wonderhouse they lived in. I could be wrong though and I can't be bothered to look it up. (By making all information easy to find, the web has made any act of willful ignorance a demonstration of supreme laziness.) Anyway, Marge felt like nobody needed her any more. So, she eventually wandered into Maggie's room, where the baby was sleeping peacefully. Marge poked her once, twice, and thrice mightily until Maggie woke up crying. Marge immediately picked her up and comforted her: "Oooh, you poor little thing! Mommy's here!".

A girl's innate desire for a simulacrum of an inconsolable weeping baby is frikkin creepy. Here's another cartoon reference. This ad reminds me of the South Park episode in which Eric Cartman, having finally broken the spirit of Scott Tenorman and making him cry, drinks his tears, calling them "delicious". Maybe they could have shown the little girl consoling the doll, instead of apparently delighting in the simulated tantrum? It looks evil.

The ad claims the doll cries REAL TEARS. Huh? Are the tears just water, or saline solution? Did the American Character Doll corporation somehow harvest actual tears from crying children? How did they store and distribute the refill tears to the customers after the initial tear supply that came with the doll ran out? I think human tears may qualify as bio-hazardous material, and as such, would be subject to strict regulation regarding their sale and distribution across state lines. The world must have been different in 1950.

The doll's face is a little odd. First, the eyebrows look like they're carefully plucked, or maybe drawn in with an eyebrow pencil. I think infancy is a little early to begin imposing these kinds of gender roles on a child. I'd cry too if I had my eyebrows pulled out as a baby.

Second, the mouth is almost too small. She looks like King Henry VIII, who died of about a hundred different things, including kind of being a jerk. The irony is that I doubt old Hank ever shed a tear in his life. However, resembling him is definitely something to cry about.

Also, I need some kind of joke about the irony of King Henry looking like a baby, when a male heir is the one thing he had so much trouble making. Maybe a joke about him buying the Tiny tears doll and having it beheaded. Gotta get the staff to come up with a joke or something about that.