I go away for a couple of days, and what happens? DT gets comment spammed into the ground by some broke-ass fad toy pushers and their gumball machine-sized, Walmart-optimized, designed-by-the-Chinese-factory, mommyblogger-astoturfed, collect'em all! Pieces of rubbery crap.
I'm talking about Squinkies.
Now I don't think mombloggers could have stopped these little pieces of junk, whose sole purpose is to train 4-yos to shop compulsively; they're the big box retail equivalent of candy cigarettes.
But the free samplin', junkets for product reviewin' culture of momblogs is definitely implicated. There are enough mombloggers now, from a broad enough demographic and geographic spread, that it acts as a kind of statistically significant consumer sample, which comes equipped with a built-in, credible-seeming, PR dissemination network.
"Mommy bloggers are incredibly powerful," said Ms. (Laura) Phillips (SVP, Toys & Seasonal Merchandise) of Wal-Mart, in part because they explain to their readers what a toy does or what age it's appropriate for. "Just getting customers aware of what they are, how do they work, what do I do with them" is quite helpful, Ms. Phillips said.Whatever. This is what we are, America. We have the retailers and toys and momblogs we deserve. And dadblogs get the spam.
Squinkies Manufacturer Savors Demand For Season's Hot Toy [NYT]
