Even with the exact same facial features and training in ballet, of color Barbie (nee, Teresa) is well…clearly not as valuable as regular Barbie. According to their price tags, Regular Barbie is 97.6% better than her off model sister.

Just in case you were thinking that maybe the mark down is the result of Wal-Mart incentivizing the purchase of RBP Barbie, they weren’t. Store management said the dolls were marked down because they weren’t selling as well. This is actually good news, because though many of the black dolls were being not-sold to white customers, there is a chance that many were being not-sold to black customers–which means there’s more Oreos in the making!!!

Last year, following the inauguration of the country’s first black president, “Good Morning America” revisited the experiment —[the famous 1939 experiment that showed most black children preferred to play with white dolls]. This time, at least some of the results were markedly different: of the 19 black children surveyed, 42 percent said they’d rather play with a black doll compared with 32 percent for the white doll. But when asked which doll was prettier, nearly half of the girls in the group chose the white doll.

See! The youth of America are learning some valuable truths.

Sure, there are some issues of capitalism, supply and demand and all that come into play. And it’s good that Wal-Mart didn’t pay attention to those factors as evidenced by their ordering more supply than met the demand. That way, instead of  skirting a potentially uncomfy issue, they reinforced the images that keep this Oreo’s hope alive.

And, they put themselves in position to make even more than they would have had they not taken a loss on the dolls. This bodes well for the ‘Mart because though sales of black dolls may be down, per the quote above, the store can most certainly count on increases in sales of flat irons, no lye relaxer and self-help books.