Greenpeace has launched a major digital offensive against toy giant Mattel, high-jacking the company’s Ken and Barbie brands to expose claims that it uses rainforest-sourced paper pulp in its packaging.
Using Flickr, Facebook and YouTube, activists announced that the pair’s relationship is on the rocks over allegations that Mattel is causing environmental damage, endangering leopards, tigers and orangutans.
The pressure group has also targeted Apple and game console makers Nintendo and Sony for what it has called dirty manufacturing practices and use of toxic materials.
The group now hopes to create outrage among Barbie’s animal-loving pre-teen fans, 2.2 million of whom “like” Barbie on Facebook. Her page was closed to comments after activists plastered it with posts like, “Don’t you feel guilty about destroying forests?”
To kick off the campaign, Greenpeace unfurled a banner at Mattel’s HQ is the US. “Barbie, it’s over. I don’t date girls who are into deforestation,” it read, accompanied by a drawing of a corporate-looking Ken lookalike. Viral elements include Ken’s “own” Facebook page (set up by Greenpeace), which offers an “Angry Ken” profile pic and links to the email of Mattel executives.
Mattel says the company has been negotiating with Greenpeace over rainforest issues, and released a statement expressing disappointment that the environmentalists “have taken this inflammatory approach.”
The campaign includes a YouTube interview with Ken, clearly aimed at an older audience than the 3-to-11-year-olds classic Barbie fan. Ken describes himself as “winning”, and then breaks into a tantrum after being told his girlfriend killed Sumatran tigers and orangutans for “cheaper packaging”.
Greenpeace says it mounted the campaign to draw attention to the toy industry’s use of glossy cardboard packaging whose pulp is partly sourced from Indonesian forests through a Chinese paper producer. An independent lab detected “mixed forest hardwood” from rainforest species in packaging samples from products made by Mattel, Hasbro, Lego, Disney and other toy companies, Greenpeace claimed.
