For your consideration: Imaginary fat toys as cautionary tales

Via AdFreak, the creepily-named “Active Life Movement” organization is warning parents and kids of the dangers of fatness by… imagining what fat toys would look like. Click any of the images below for the giant screen-filling versions.

The tagline for this campaign is “Keep obesity away from your child,” but I am failing to understand the connection. Is it that you should not allow your offspring to play with nonexistent fat toys? That you should keep fat people away from your kid?

If the concept is that the non-fat versions of the above toys often operate as role models for kids, then that’s even more bizarre. Are we really okay with our kids wanting to be pirates when they grow up – so long as they’re thin? The use of a Barbie-like doll is particularly baffling, considering that the “normal” Barbie body, with its gigantic rack and tiny waist, is WAY the fuck out of proportion with what a healthy child’s body should look like.

On the upside, taken out of context, these are some spectacularly fabulous images. (And cropped versions will inevitably be turning up as icons on LiveJournal in 3…2….1…..!)

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