Here is a link to a toy my son Dan got his animal-loving daughter for her birthday. But when Lauren started playing with it, he realized what it was about when she yanked on the dog’s tail and poop came out. (All he saw was Barbie and dog and thought, “Perfect gift.” That’s my boy!) As he was coping with his shock regarding this surprising turn of events, the obvious question occurred to him: “Where does the poop come from?” Then he discovered that the poop also serves as the treats that Barbie feeds the dog. Hmmmmm…..
Being the doting grandmother I am, I read the product reviews and discovered that, in addition to some reviewers thinking the poop looked much too much like brown TicTacs (?) and the usual hysteria about little kids eating the pooper-scooper and dying or doing likewise because the toy may have been made in China, some solid medical information about Tanner’s (the dog’s) physiology emerged. Several reviewers noted that Tanner’s diet of treats resulted in constipation that could be relieved by using a paperclip. However, another reviewer noted that, if this weren’t done carefully, one could throw Tanner into diarrhea and the treats would fall out of him of their own accord.
All of this led me to conclude that this doll needs a new name because the dog obviously has problems. Unless he’s some sort of messiah dog who can turn stool into treats, the combination of copraphagia (stool-eating) plus intermittent constipation that ultimately may give way to diarrhea suggests that Tanner’s gastro-intestinal system is not up to par. If nothing else, he’s not absorbing the nutrients from those treats and thus running them through the system again. Fortunately, my granddaughter also has Veterinary Barbie so hopefully she can get to the root of this problem quickly.
Makes me glad all my dollies did, at most, was pee, and all my toy dogs just sat there and looked at me.