Note to employers: I'm exaggerating
my ideal, completely appropriate, totally polically-correct asian pacific american toychest for the asian pacific american
(With apologies to the real deal. Take with a grain bucketfuls of salt, of course.)
LAUREN, THE ASIAN-PACIFIC-ISLANDER SPOKEN WORD POET DOLL: Lauren would come in a cardigan sweater and a pair of fabulous black, horn-rimmed glasses, where she would stand quietly. Stand quietly, of course, until you pull the string in the back - then she because ANGRY ASIAN-AMERICAN ACTIVIST LAUREN, where she would scream epithets about racial inequality, the "model minority," and race quotas in the UC system in perfect iambic pentameter. Sample phrases would address the objectification of Asian American women, references to obvious Asian pop culture like Hello Kitty and yell, because spoken word poets like to yell a lot. Whatever.
Accessories for Lauren would include Brian, Laurens male counterpart (Giant Robot magazine included), a hip hop DJ, and a crowd consisting mostly of Lauren's sympathetic white friends.
HOT WHEELS, THE IMPORT VERSION: Hot Wheels as Corvettes? C'mon now, Hot Wheels are so early-to-mid 80's. When you dip these plastic cars in water, instead of changing water, a body kit, spoiler and giant Yuban-can exhaust pipe magically appears. Look closely and you can actually see the decals, usually ironic kanji character translations like MUSTANG or SATURN. (Miniature replica of In-N-Out Burger sold separately.)
THE SIMS - TRENDY ASIAN NIGHTCLUB EDITION: (Note to readers: I was going to make an easy joke about how it would be like a typical Sims game, except you'd be inside a club, only have the option of wearing black clothes and your only options would be "drink a shot of vodka," "throw up," and "dance to 'Bizarre Love Triangle,'" but I'd be taking the low route. The Korean version would also have an option to "start bar brawl," but that would give me outright hate mail. So I'll pass on this one.)
BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, THE FIGURINE SET: Pshht. Tired of playing with your comic book figurines? Has fantasy role playing become cliched? It's time to play with these figurines based off of Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow, a ground-breaking Asian-American film which debuted at the 2002 Sundance Festival. Now kids can act out what Asian-Americans really do, according to the movie:
Shoot free-throws all day
Pistol-whip the jock that calls you an "Asian nerd"
Win Math Olympic competitions
Kill and bury the people you don't like - and get away with it!