A new product has hit the shelves of toy shops in Baghdad, and it is selling briskly. It’s chubby, decked out with hand grenades, a walkie-talkie, binoculars and an AK-47, and swivels to the tune of "Hippy Hippy Shake." It’s a Saddam Hussein doll, and it wiggles its hips on command. A Turkish traveling salesman brought the novelty to Iraq. He also markets dancing Osama bin Ladens.
The hip-shaking Osamas were already top sellers. Now with Iraqi citizens being less fearful of their former despot they’re buying the Saddam toys, too. "At the beginning we’d hide them under the counter and only sell them to those who specially asked because people were upset to see the former president as a doll," Asaad Majid, a Mansoor toy salesman, told Reuters. "Now we’re not scared anymore. We display them openly, and people buy them regularly," he divulged. The Left Coast Report hears that there’s a John Kerry doll with a guileful gimmick. No matter where you place it on the table it pretends to move to the center. |