Unusual location to put a straw on a princess sippy cup

My sister took this photo of a Disney princess sippy cup with an odd location for the drinking straw.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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RevelryByNight

Yes. I have one of these. (It’s my Burning Man cup).
Yes. The top rotates, so the straw isn’t necessarily a phallus (It could be, for instance, an enema tube.)
Yes. The best part is that she stares lovingly into your eyes as you take her into your mouth.

Best plastic purchase of the past year for me, yessir.
skeletoncityrepeater

This is nit-picky, but that’s not actually a sippy cup. A sippy cup is one of those safety cups for babies with a little sipping spout on the cap. This is a novelty cup with a built-in straw, meant for children, not babies.
lukegregory

Shameless self-promotion but I have a humble little blog dedicated to ‘Inappropriate Stuff For Kids’ like this. Would welcome any feedback. http://www.lukegregory.com
RedShirt77

What is tuely creepy about this thing is the adoring gaze of the character. Kids must have to drink with their eyes closed or else those little plastic eyes would be an inch from their nose with each sip.
Enormo

Those aren’t princesses. They’re queens.
jackie31337

Also, I should take a picture of the Aurora/sleeping beauty bath soap dispenser my daughter received as a gift. You have to take Aurora’s torso off to open the lid for the soap. Once the torso popped off unexpectedly while she was taking a shower, causing her to exclaim “Aah! I’m being attacked by flying princess bodies!”
wolfwitch

This is still my all-time-favorite toy mistake, thanks to BoingBoing:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/17/phallic_toy_alert_do.html
Larskydoodle

It’s comment threads like this that make me proud to be a BoingBoinglander.
Anonymous

In this pic, it makes you wonder just what Dora is exploring back there.

Obligatory grammar snark: if her breath is baited, I think I will bate mine.
Sprayah

Also her far elbow looks like a droopy boob…
Ian_McLoud

I want to know where I purchase one of these, or even better the Buzz Lightyear cup, for drinking water in my office cube. If you know, please share.
nitpicker

Well, one of her songs in the Broadway musical is “A Change in Me.” Now I understand what she was talking about.
Lobster

The belle of the balls?
Anonymous

Think that is bad check out the Prince sippy cup
Godfree

Hey, I have an idea. How about we abandon the whole anthropomorphic sippy-cup idea, and just print cartoon pictures on the side?

On a side note: None of these are as bad as the Jar-Jar Binks tongue lollipop.
irksome

Wait, wait; I thought it was “TWO Girls, One Cup”.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. 55 posts and no one had gone there.
Emo Pinata

See’s just looking up at you with a big doe-eyed expression silently saying, “Suck me. Suck me dry.”
Teller

Chicks with…Straws!
TimDrew

Disney’s latest product: “Liposuction Belle” (was wonderin’ how those Disney princesses kept themselves so thin…)
tuckels

I struggle to believe that this is incidental.
robulus

I’m amused. And strangely aroused.
boo

You’d rather it came out of the back?
Orchestra Spy

I thought Belle wore Blue?
- Talia
  
  She wears a yellow gown in a ballroom scene later in the movie.
  - Anonymous
    
    the joke ‘The Aristocrats’ comes to mind…
mellowknees

It could be worse. It could contain BPA and be coming out of her butt.
endymion

Yeah, I’m not sure there is a good place to put the straw, with a person-shaped cup.
shadywood

An “odd” location, you say? Not as odd as where she’s hiding her tentacles!
Brainspore

Gaston is going to be so relieved she didn’t choose him after all. If there’s one thing that sets him off more than rejection, it’s being one-upped.
littlebone

The “accidental penis” link reminded me of the Rebecca Romijn print/billboard add for Bebe a few years ago:

http://bp2.blogger.com/_BcAhLr85Pvs/Rmu3LAD12CI/AAAAAAAAHuE/cXa97wLfXp8/s1600-h/rebecca2.jpg

I suppose I’m just a naif for thinking it was unintentional.
rabidlemur

Nice to see Disney moving their production to Thailand…
Brainspore

Know who else doesn’t like being outdone? Buzz Lightyear.

http://boingboing.net/2010/11/21/buzz-lightyear-with.html
- YarbroughFair
  
  @ brainspore: Thank you! Buzz is much better than this one. I’m seeing so much repeat stuff on BoingBoing or two year old news. What gives?
  - Brainspore
    
    I like the other one because you can describe it as “Buzz & Woody.” However if I had a penis as disproportionally large as Belle’s I suppose that I might refer to it as “The Beast.”
- Xenu
  
  Looks like it’s even on the same shelf…
Antinous / Moderator

Where’s my Ron Jeremy sippy cup?
Ultra Fem

You’d prefer it out the back?
Tavie

“New and a bit alarming/ who’d have ever thought that this could be?”

or

“There may be something there that wasn’t there before…”
Anonymous

Those aren’t Disney princesses. They’re Daleks in drag.

Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!
Anonymous

Check out Jeepers Media on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/JeepersMedia). Most of the videos are reviews of children’s toys with terrible design flaws.
egoVirus

I like how she looks at you reverentially WHILE you suck from her plastic phallus. It’s like she’s waiting with baited breath for you to opine on the deliciousness of her contents. Very creepy, and wide open to feminist outrage.
- Chuck
  
  I think she’s trying to entice us with that look. I don’t trust her.
Jack

W.A.S.P. fans: With this cup you will suck a beast!
Sam

Looks like she’s using a “Shenis” – http://www.shenis.com/
franko

really, though, is there any GOOD place to have a straw coming out?
- Jake0748
  
  No, there isn’t. That’s why this kind of product is completely stupid.
Anonymous

This was covered already. (though perhaps not here exactly) It was concluded that:
(1) character tie-in forces a large upper body on top of drinks cup.
(2) the physics of straws force an angled-upwards pipe somewhere below that character representation
(3) phallus-pareidolia can take it from there.

Proof that this is an unavoidable result of merch engineering is that you-all are snickering about it when it’s a female character.
Anonymous

If you dig this, check out http://www.someoneneedstobefired.com

- Clay
TEKNA2007

Since that needs to be washed at some point, it probably qualifies as a

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detachable_Penis
godisafiction

I love that it’s a bendy straw too. If you grip it and pull, it will get longer.
caipirina

Honi soit qui mal y pense

Ein Schelm wer Arges dabei denkt …

as one poster said correctly … teh straw has to come out SOMEwhere … not many choices (how about the armpit?)… but oh so much fun for the BB community
benher

Can’t they just give away a toy when you buy a regular cup?

I wonder what all those kids thought when they were mass-assembling these things for their American overlords.
Anonymous

Seen recently in thrift store as well:
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/f96tx/sure_i_will_drink_from_the_princess_cupwait_a_min/
rebdav

So I was on BoingBoing and I saw this toy with a boingboing.
Mista Spakuru

It’s for amniocentesis.

That princess is over forty years old, my friends!
Anonymous

then clearly you’ve never seen Accidental Penis.

http://accidentalpenis.com/
Anonymous

Where else do you put a catheter?
RedShirt77

Can someone please photoshop this so she has two staws comming out of her boobs instead?
Anonymous

Not only is the Princess happy to see you, she strikes a pose like the Lady in the Radiator.
Anonymous

The amount of transphobia in this thread makes me very sad.
Anonymous

I’d call it a strange shape for a sippy cup, because really, there’s no good place to put a straw on something human body shaped.
dainel

I thought this looked familiar … :)

And Cory mentioned that the top probably rotates, so the straw *CAN* come out the back, or the side.
Anonymous

To those saying the straw had to come out somewhere: the top of the head would have been super logical and non-phallic. It might have even made the cup easier to drink from. As designed, if the straw is canted strongly downwards I wonder if the whole thing would act as siphon, emptying its self.
coldbrah

…Meanwhile…in the Princess Sippy factory….

Holycrap guys!! where do we stick the darn straws??

in her bum….?
in her skull….?
in her chest…..?

…f**k it… stick it in the front of her skirt and deal with the boingboing fallout….
robulus

“Proof that this is an unavoidable result of merch engineering is that you-all are snickering about it when it’s a female character.”

Don’t judge our love. Something that feels this right can’t possibly be wrong.
Anonymous

I used to work for Disney Consumer Products and I can tell you exactly how this happened. DCP has a set of weird rules which are so cast in stone over the years that nobody questions them. One is that you can’t have a straw coming out of the character’s head because that would look like you were “drinking their brain.” You will almost never see a Disney product with the straw coming out the top, so designers are forced to come up with alternate solutions –occasionally with unexpected results.
peterbruells

49 posts and not one mentioning that Belle isn’t a princess?
- jackie31337
  
  Belle becomes a princess when she marries the prince, who was turned into the beast. She’s as much of a princess as Cinderella is.
millionpoems

It’s a better look on Buddha than a princess, I’ll give you that.
Anonymous

I’m reminded of the wise words of Admiral Ackbar…
http://images1.memegenerator.net/ImageMacro/5541132/ITS-A-CUP.jpg?imageSize=Medium&generatorName=admiral-ackbar