Mattel seeks to reinvigorate sales with Barbies of various sizes

Bernadette del Prado and Parker Miele

Staff Writers

Barbie dolls, the toy almost every child wanted. The only problem with the old Barbie was that her physique was impossible to achieve and was advertising poor characteristics towards child consumers. After 57 years, Barbie dolls have finally come in many different races and sizes. Mattel has introduced 23 new versions of Barbies from short to tall, skinny to curvy, white or black and have shown a new side to the popular children’s toy.

 Mattel had finally decided to advertise that the generic Barbie doll is not the only “pretty” one. They have come to show that all types of body sizes, races, and personalities are beautiful. Mattel has always advertised that every little girl should be like Barbie. In 1965, the Slumber Party Barbie included a How to Lose Weight booklet. This booklet told girls if they want to be skinnier, just don’t eat, which was the only advice in the booklet, as well as other Barbies were advertising poor behavior, such as being 110lbs as a 5’ 9” girl, not being able to do math because they’re too pretty, teen pregnancy, and many other controversial issues. Although they have fixed the issue with Barbie, the public are trying to get a change in the Ken doll. This is so men also don’t feel that they have to have the “perfect” body as well, there are many different skin types and body sizes, and they are all beautiful.

 The new Barbie is more accepting of all sizes and races, which help girl have more self esteem and confidence. The company did a great job on the new dolls, but now they just have to consumers are waiting for  a new Ken doll with different races and body types.  The new and improved Barbie hopefully has changed the eyes of little girls and not basing their looks off of one doll.

Bernie’s big problem

Oren Depp

Staff Writer

Bernie Sanders has recently run into a roadblock in his quest for the Democratic nomination. Democratic rival Hillary Clinton already leads Bernie Sanders 1,188 to 564 in delegates, while Bernie struggles to make a decisive win in any key states after his New Hampshire landslide. Among Super Tuesday states, recent polls show Sanders also lags behind Clinton in nearly every state except Ohio, where polling suggests a marginal advantage.

Besides the recent ceiling Sanders has seemed to hit in support, there are a few other reasons why Sanders is expected to struggle in the coming months.

For one, Sanders must confront an army of superdelegates who have already pledged support for Clinton; a whopping 458 superdelegates have pledged to Clinton, compared to Sanders’s 22.

Sanders will also be forced to face the general political reality of low voter turnout among younger voters, which is where a large chunk of Sanders’s support lies. The hope that Sanders could fire up young voters to participate has largely not come true in reality, with young voter turnout still lower than all other age groups.

Following Super Tuesday, the Sanders campaign faces an even more formidable obstacle as Sanders won by closer-than-comfort margins in Colorado, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. The only state Sanders won by high margins was in his home state of Vermont, which only contains 10 delegates.

Super Saturday, however, provides a spark of hope in the Sanders’s campaign. The lagging candidate took home two states, Kansas and Nebraska, leaving Clinton with a heavy win in Louisiana. The following day, Sanders also won Maine.

A critical win came on Super Tuesday number two for Sanders as he won Michigan, disproving the initial polling that suggested a comfortable lead for Clinton. Sanders won the tight race with a 49.9% to 48.2% victory.

Another hope for Sanders’s campaign is the media firestorm that might be lit should the nomination be decided by superdelegates. Should such a case occur, superdelegates may redistribute their votes in order to save face for the party. This idea also has precedent in the fact that Barack Obama also received a redistributed superdelegate count when he gained traction in the election in 2008. Whether this applies to a relative radical like Sanders is yet to be seen.

Beyonce reminds us of history in Super Bowl 50 halftime show

Alexandra Buchler
Staff Writer

Super Bowl 50 was celebrated on Feb. 7 and caught the attention of over 111.9 million viewers, according to Hollywood Reporter. Between Peyton Manning’s not so commendable performance, and the Denver Broncos defeating the Carolina Panthers by 14 points, this was surely an exciting game.

 Every Super Bowl, families settle in and enjoy the game, laugh at the commercials (which may just be the best part) and watch the halftime show. For the past 50 Super bowls there has been an immense amount of pressure placed on the halftime performers, so was Coldplay and Bruno Mars side supporting act, Beyonce,  able to pull it off or was her performance not as good as everyone expected?

 According to a multitude of websites including Fox News, NYTimes, Hollywood Life, NYDailyNews and Washington Post, Beyonce's performance was a commemoration to The Black Panthers, with Beyonce herself and her dancers being dressed like them. The Black Panthers were a group of people who fought to establish equal rights for minorities. Beyonce's outfit was identical to Michael Jackson's Super Bowl performance outfit in 1993, and her dancers were dressed as modern day Black Panthers. The Black Panthers actually reached out to Beyonce and a former member, William Johnson claimed, “As an original member of the Black Panther Party I thank Beyonce for her courage to make a statement on National TV. I am sure she understood the backlash that would follow her performance @ the 50th anniversary of the Super Bowl, so on behalf of The National Alumni Association of the Black Panther Party we thank you & salute you.”  

 Beyonce did not only rock the halftime performance, but she made a political statement about African American rights in America. However, according to Buzzfeed.com, 68% of people who watched the Superbowl claimed that the halftime show was not as spectacular as they expected. Even though Beyonce has over 60 million followers on Instagram, was her Super Bowl performance a disappointment or a powerful statement for America?

Standoffs in Oregon Over Land Lead to Armed Protests

Jonah and Jack Slominski

Staff Writers

What started out originally as protests over two men being sent back to prison for setting fire to federal land as well as their own ranches escalated into an armed standoff between the two groups. Protesters gathered in a small Oregon town called Burns, ironically, on Jan. 2.

A group of armed militants broke off from the protestors and then took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge about 30 miles away from the town. Their leader, Ammon Bundy, son of famed Nevada protestor Cliven Bundy said they did not have any intentions of violence unless acted upon.

This is where things started to get ugly, as the militants and police could not reach an agreement in negotiations, which lead to the FBI’s involvement. Ammon Bundy also called all nearby ranchers to tear up their contracts with the government and stop paying their grazing fees as well. These were the reasons why Ammon Bundy and his father, Cliven Bundy, have gotten into disputes with the government before. The standoff continued to escalate when the FBI and a few protesters met about 20 miles from Burns where there was a firefight between the two groups leaving one dead and five protesters in police custody, including Bundy. He would later release a statement from court to the remaining protesters, telling them to stand down.

The number of militants in the wildlife refuge continued to decrease. On Thursday just four armed men and women appeared to be still there in the morning. Still they were surrounded by federal law enforcement who still had blocked off the roads to this building. Only one exit was unprotected to give the protesters a chance to give up and flee the scene which a couple of the protestors took advantage of. The last holdout was David Fry. Fry would eventually leave the refuge without a fight, ending the standoff. The standoff left one dead and 25 others indicted.

New plus-size Barbie shows realistic representation of body types

Bernadette del Prado and Parker Miele

Staff Writers

Barbie dolls, the toy almost every child wanted. The only problem with the old Barbie was that her physique was impossible to achieve and was advertising poor characterics towards child consumers. After 57 years, Barbie dolls have finally come in many different races and sizes. Mattel has introduced 23 new versions of Barbies from short to tall, skinny to curvy, white or black and have shown a new side to the popular children’s toy.

 Mattel had finally decided to advertise that the generic Barbie doll is not the only “pretty” one. They have come to show that all types of body sizes, races, and personalities are beautiful. Mattel has always advertised that every little girl should be like Barbie. In 1965, the Slumber Party Barbie included a How to Lose Weight booklet. This booklet told girls if they want to be skinnier, just don’t eat, which was the only advice in the booklet, as well as other Barbies were advertising poor behavior, such as being 110lbs as a 5ft”9’ girl, not being able to do math because they’re too pretty, teen pregnancy, and many other controversial issues. Although they have fixed the issue with Barbie, the public are trying to get a change in the Ken doll. This is so men also don’t feel that they have to have the “perfect” body as well, there are many different skin types and body sizes, and they are all beautiful.

 The new Barbie is more accepting of all sizes and races, which help girl have more self esteem and confidence. The company did a great job on the new dolls, but now they just have to consumers are waiting for  a new Ken doll with different races and body types.  The new and improved Barbie hopefully has changed the eyes of little girls and not basing their looks off of one doll.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee passes away at 89

Riley Brennan

Staff Writer

The literary celebrity and author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Harper Lee, unfortunately passed away Feb. 19. The groundbreaking novelist was 89 years old when she passed away in her sleep.

 Harper resided in Alabama, the same state as the setting of her famous novel. Lee grew up in a small town, where her father was a lawyer, and her good friend Truman Capote would visit every summer which she also worked on “In Cold Blood” with. They later worked together on numerous projects in their adult lives.  

 Due to the many parallels seen between“To Kill A Mockingbird” and Harper Lee’s life, it is believed that Lee modeled the main character, Scout, after herself. When Lee was writing her novel she did not expect for it to reach the success it did, let alone any success at all. She struggled with the fame her book brought her, because she never really wanted it  in the first place.

 After “To Kill A Mockingbird” was published, fans hoped for another book, or a possible sequel from Lee. Neither came until around fifty years later. The publishing of a second book by Harper Lee was a surprise to many, seeing as she had sworn to never publish another book, and because of her declining health and age. A manuscript submitted by Lee to her editors in 1957 titled “Go Set a Watchman” was published in 2015. The novel is thought to be a sequel of “To Kill A Mockingbird.”  While the recently published novel was thought to be controversial, due to the acceptance of racial bigotry among some of the main characters, it was still successful, climbing to the top of the bestseller list, and selling over a million copies in the first week.

 Overall, Harper Lee was a quiet, private person, who did not enjoy or feel comfortable dealing with her success. In an interview with The Associated Press, Lee said “Success has had a very bad effect on me,” and then later in the interview adding, “I’ve gotten fat - but extremely uncomplacent. I’m running just as scared as before.” She acted in a way that supported these statements. She did very few interviews, published nothing more than a few articles, and rarely made public appearances. One of her last interviews was in 1964, and from there was really only seen publicly when she would make the rare appearance to accept an award, which were complete with nothing more than a few lines of thanks upon winning. Such behavior sent critics straight into a frenzy of complaints. Many called her recluse, ingrateful, or rude, when in reality offending her fans and audience did not seem to be her intention. In reality, she was a private woman from Alabama who achieved national success and fame without meaning to, while simultaneously giving the world one of the most cherished books of all time.