Dear Barbie: Time for a Little Chat with Your Bosses at Mattel About the Social Contract

Dear Barbie,

Remember me?

I am one of that first generation of girls who dreamt of being the first in my neighborhood to get one of your dream houses and to score your dream car for Christmas. And I'm surely dating myself when I tell you that even when I was little, I thought that striped bathing suit and pony tail hairdo with the curly bangs was really lame. But I persevered through that bad hair day of yours and ended up owning fifteen different versions of you and your posse at one time, plus a collection of fashions that rivaled anything my mother wore.

And then when I grew up and had my own kid, I filled his room with all kinds of your corporate brothers and sisters, those Fisher Price toys, Big Birds and Oscars. And I was even a little peeved that I couldn't relive the Barbie thing with my own child, him being a son and all.

But now, things in the toy box have taken a darker turn, Barbie.

And it's time you had a little chat with the big boys in the Mattel boardroom about how they're making the toys these days. It seems that along with all that fun, they're shipping environmental toxins like lead-laced toys to store shelves across the country. Like your pet and furniture playsets.

You might want to remind them that while parents surely want to pay the cheapest price possible for their kids' toys, it is with the understanding that those toys be actually safe. It's simply part of the assumed social contract that toy manufacturers have with parents and kids. And you're probably the only one at Mattel with the clout to remind the boardroom denizens about this.

Oh, and while you're at it, you might want to mention that this isn't the best time for Mattel to nitpick with the Consumer Product Safety Commission like they did yesterday in The Wall Street Journal.

It is just a little unseemly when a company that's had to recall millions of toys in the past 45 days is seen arguing with the Feds about the rules regarding alerting them in 24 hours if they have a potential product hazard.

I'm just saying. An increasingly irritated posse of parents are watching.