Poor Little Penny

Christmas has never been a big deal in Hong Kong.

Many stores and shops decorate for it, and the expatriate community continues to observe the holidays, but local Chinese reserve their fervor for Lunar New Year.

However, one gift, made by a US firm known as the Living Dead Doll company, is aimed at Hong Kongers. It's called Hong Kong Penny: a doll of a teenage suicide victim. She comes complete with her own coffin-shaped box, blood-stained white cheung sam, and a gruesome head wound from the fall that killed her.

That's sick.

Worse yet is the little ditty that accompanies the doll:

Poor little Penny hit the street with her head, now she keeps company with the creatures under your bed.

The gruesome thing sells for about $1,000, and though stores with a sense of decency, ethics and good taste have decided not to stock the doll, smaller toy shops in Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok are doing brisk business.

Most of the buyers are female office workers. Do they intend to use the doll as an object lesson for their kids, to deter them from jumping off buildings should they fail an exam or have trouble with their love life?

In Hong Kong, people will sell anything to make a buck.

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