It's Just Business to Sell One Barbie for Less... Right?

Wal Mart got news today for selling black Barbies for almost half the price of the same style white Barbies. When the Cafferty File showed it this afternoon I was not sure what to make of it, so I went digging.

Google lead me to the Huffington Post, which has a video from a news broadcast about it, and the video lead me to a site called Guanabee.com, a Latino news site that bills itself as "Spicy Coverage". I had to do a search on their site for "Barbie" to locate the article. Which is from the 1st of March. They updated with a point to the site Funny Junk as their source for the picture.

Note: I advise against visiting Funny Junk, since the only thing they seem to be is a "who can rant louder" forum of people throwing racist and sexist insults back and forth.

So, as for the picture that started it all:

You can see here in a picture that was, from what I can determine, taken by a lady shopping in a Louisianan Wal-Mart, that the store discounted Mattel's Ballerina Teresa dolls (blue dress) from $5.93 down to $3.00 each, while Mattel's Ballerina Barbie (pink dress) remained at the original price of $5.93 each.

Now, the buzz all over the place is that this is something pertaining to racism. The
Cafferty File says that Wal-Mart informed ABC News that this was no more than an effort to clear shelf space in preparation for spring inventory.

A lot of the comments at the Cafferty File point to it being a simple business decision. One product is moving slower means that it is marked down so it will sell at a speed equal to the other product. Had this been a gallon of fat free milk that was marked down beside whole milk, would they be making some kind of commentary on obesity? Or would it be a simple business motivated reduction in a product that was not selling as well as another product by the same company?

I doubt that Wal-Mart did anything other than make a business decision to help move one product at the same rate as a similar product in an effort to clear shelf space, but I welcome input from others on what they think of the situation. I checked Mattel's site, but I did not see anything to indicate any press releases on their perspective on the issue.

(Any comments that are of an attacking nature will not make it past moderation)