Fund This: Yuna and Dream Big Friends

Meet Yuna, the first Asian American girl to be the center of a doll line.



Meet Yuna, the central character of Dream Big Friends, a new doll line from David Horvath and Sun Min, the designers behind Uglydolls, and Bigshot Toyworks. She's the first in an upcoming series of dolls based on characters that are "as smart, funny, inquisitive and rambunctious as the kids we all know in our daily lives."

Yuna is a 10-inch, fully articulated doll with real fabric clothing and accessories, right down to her Giant Robot t-shirt. She loves rockets, photography, painting and drawing. Her big dream is to one day establish her own commercial rocket company. She believes she is destined to go to Mars. She sounds pretty awesome.

So... want to be one of the first people to get one of these Yuna dolls? They're currently crowdfunding and taking pre-order for Dream Big Friends through Kickstarter. Watch this video for more information:

SNL's Asian American Doll: The Doll That's Asian American

"We made her from a place of fear."



Over the weekend, Saturday Night Live aired one bit that might be a little too clever for its good. The perennial TV sketch comedy show's final episode of 2014 included a fake commercial for "Asian American Doll," The Doll That's Asian American -- and that's it. The joke: the marketing purposely excludes all other possible details about the doll, in quivering, paralyzed fear of being accused of racial or cultural insensitivity.

I've seen a lot of divergent reactions to the sketch. Some are hailing it as clever commentary on well-meaning-but-clueless white people who have no idea what they're doing when it comes to dealing with race. Others are calling it a jab at hypersensitive consumers and activists. It's either a quiet middle finger or an embarrassed "sorrrreeeeeee" shrug to Asian Americans. I don't know, I'm thinking it's actually both.

Take a look: