Ty Girlz - Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia Controversy

Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia Controversy

In January 2009, Ty released two new Ty Girlz, one named Sweet Sydneyand the other named Marvelous MarIah ref name=denies>"Ty denies Obama girls inspired Sweet Sasha, Marvelous Malia". CNN. January 23, 2009. Media reports linked the names to Sasha and Malia Obama, daughters of President Barack Obama. On January 21, a Ty spokesperson told the Chicago Sun-Times that the Obama daughters were indeed the inspiration to the Ty CEO to make the dolls. In response to the Beanie Babies, Michelle Obama's press secretary said that Ty did not ask permission to use the Obama daughters' first names, saying "It is inappropriate to use young private citizens for marketing purposes." On January 22, when asked whether the new Beanie Babies were inspired by Sasha and Malia Obama, Ty's Senior Vice President of Sales said that the dolls were not made to physically resemble either of the Obama daughters and that the names chosen "worked very well with the dolls". Ty said that the process of naming dolls is proprietary information and would not say how the names were given to the dolls. In February 2009, Ty decided to retire the original dolls and give them new names, Marvelous Mariah and Sweet Sydney. Warner says the original names were inspired by what he calls "this historic time in our nation's history," but the dolls weren't intended to bear the likeness of President Barack Obama's daughters. The CEO of Ty said the name change was due to Michelle Obama's disapproval of the original names. Ty stated that while the original names were inspired by "this historic time in our nation's history", they were not named after the Obama daughters. Ty promised to donate the profits from sales of the original dolls to a charity, the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation for youth education.

Following the recall, dolls that had already been shipped to the marketplace sold on EBay for $3000.