Last week, Disney announced that it was adding the headstrong, flame-haired heroine to its "Princess" collection. But it was the revamped image of Merida -- her waist nipped, her eyes elongated, her messy tangle of hair a sexy tumble, her plain dress a shimmer of bling and her trademark bow and arrow nowhere to be seen – that set parents' jaws dropping. Disney blandly told Yahoo Shine that "Merida exemplifies what it means to be a Disney Princess through being brave, passionate, and confident and she remains the same strong and determined Merida from the movie whose inner qualities have inspired moms and daughters around the world." But it didn't quell the disgust.

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Boots' enlightenment began after Twitter user Sean E. Gray posted a photo from the store, with the caption "not impressed." It revealed the store's "Girl Toy" section, featuring princess gear and mini-tea sets, and the "Boy" section -- chock-full of Science Museum brand kits.

As the Guardian reports, Boots initially defended the placement, saying its real estate choices were based on "customer feedback" and making the stores "easier to navigate." But in the face of mounting criticism, it has since retreated, promising on its Facebook page that "It was never our intention to stereotype certain toys. It's clear we have got this signage wrong, and we're taking immediate steps to remove it from store."

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Major clothing retailers like Wal-Mart, Joe Fresh, JCPenney and the Children's Place were each found to have subcontracted manufacturing to the crumbling factory in Savar, where workers were making an average of $38 a month and coerced to report to work even after the walls of the building were literally falling apart. In November, fire ravaged another garment factory near the capital city of Dhaka, leaving 112 dead. Again, pieces of clothing from Sears, the Walt Disney Co. and other major retailers were found among the scorched remains.

In the aftermath of such tragic, and preventable, losses of life, many consumers are left asking themselves what role they can play in discouraging disasters like this from happening again. And, fortunately, there are answers. The collective power of workers is a real thing, and the collective power of consumers is, too.

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Raised in the hamlet of Frankenstein in central Missouri, a few miles from where he still lives, Kremer wasn’t even old enough to attend grade school when his father gave him the job of bottle-feeding orphaned piglets in the house. By age six, he had graduated to tending sows and their litters. At eight, Kremer’s father handed him a recently weaned female and said, "She’s yours." Kremer named her Honeysuckle and raised her like a pet, often lying beside her in her stall. She gave birth to 15 young -- a challenge because she only had 13 nipples. Normally, at least three piglets would have died, but Kremer switched the babies on and off their mother during the critical early weeks. All 15 survived.

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Over the weekend, sharp-eyed posters on Reddit pointed out a sign in the window of the Australian gluten-free grocer Celiac Supplies warning that "As of the first of February, this store will be charging people a $5 fee per person for 'just looking.' The $5 fee will be deducted when goods are purchased." No mention, by the way, of a refund if a customer leaves empty-handed.

Meanwhile, over in China, overrated bridal gown designer Vera Wang has celebrated the opening of her new wedding boutique by announcing that "every potential customer at the Shanghai store will be charged 3,000 yuan ($482) simply to try on the gowns for sale." Shoppers have also been scolded that they should give the store "several weeks" to get an appointment, when they will then be allotted just 90 minutes to try on clothes. Seriously, shoppers, it's called eBay, and you can ogle all day long for free there.

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As reported by Bloomberg News, current rules "require a rolled tobacco product to weigh at least 3 pounds per 1,000 to be labeled as a 'large' or 'premium' cigar, a category where taxes increased just 155 percent."

The practice of weighting tobacco products has contributed to a 100 percent increase in sales of the filler-laced products, and a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blames the “tax disparities between product types” for increased adult consumption of pipe tobacco and cigarette-like cigars. While cigarette smoking has been on the decline for more than a decade, "large cigar" smoking, including the filler-laced cigarettes, tripled in the same time period.

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That's how much the National Retail Federation estimates we will shell out this year for our dogs, cats, "fish, horses and small animals." I'd say that it's all well and good, but don't expect them to reciprocate with so much as a card -- except that over the past few years, I've noticed a creeping new segment of the card shop rack devoted to none other than "From Cat" greetings.

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Just kidding! It is only Thursday, and all that we have to satiate our football hunger is a humble grouping of Super Bowl ad previews.

So join me in watching them, and pretending -- if just for a moment -- that it's the big day and the working week is just a distant memory.

The Good (relatively speaking)

Hyundai uses Wes Anderson-esque stylized detachment to sell its 2013 Sonata Turbo. Who's buying?

Pepsi made Super Bowl history with a sexy Cindy Crawford in cut-offs. This ad will not make Super Bowl history, but it gets points for an extended take of a teenager dumping a full gallon of milk on his head and casting a mustachioed Will Forte lookalike as a preternaturally chill, soda-loving dad.

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It reported revenue of $54.5 billion, almost exactly what analysts had predicted. Sales of its famous iPhone and iPad products were slightly below expectations at 47.8 million and 22.9 million, respectively. It reported gross margin of 38.6 percent below the expected 39.5 percent.

The world’s most valuable company has seen its stock slide almost 30 percent since September. Apple, which changed the world with its iPhone and iPad products, appears increasingly vulnerable to competition, especially from the South Korean behemoth Samsung.

While Apple offers a relatively small number of products for a company of its type and size, and a famously controlled tech “ecosystem,” Samsung sells a more diverse, almost anarchic, product line. And its products typically run on Google’s more open Android operating system.

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"Some of the shrinkage in sales can be attributed to more fuel-efficient cars," Short writes. "But that presumably would be minor over shorter time frames and would be offset to some extent by population growth." He also notes that this list of top 10 best-selling vehicles has its share of gas guzzling pickups and SUVs.

And the sales drop has taken place at a time when the population has grown. Short finds that per-capita gas sales have declined almost 20 percent since March 1989.

What's going on here? Short sees several factors at work: 1) Urban populations have climbed, 2) Fewer people in the aging population have to get to work and 3) More young people are able to work from home or, due to social media, are less interested in leaving the house. We've become a nation less demographically inclined to drive.

h't Quartz

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On Christmas, the Billboard-chart-dominating star took to Instagram to vent his spleen against retailers with an image of a groaning shelf -- unironically designated "beauty" -- full of caps emblazoned with the acronym YOLO. "Walgreens....you gotta either chill or cut the cheque," he wrote in Canadian, adding a "Macy's...same goes for you" warning under a photo of a YOLO-themed Charlie Brown and Snoopy shirt. Coming soon: Morgan Freeman getting huffy every time someone mentions a bucket list, and Robert Carlyle issuing an injunction against all forms of Full Montyism.

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New York Times columnist Mark Bittman argues that the almost 50 million people who receive SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps) should not be allowed to spend the funds on soda and other junk food. The idea has “been gaining momentum in the last few years” Bittman writes, since “no one without a share in the profits can argue that [a sugary drink] plays a constructive role in any diet.”

Bittman’s column highlights a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association:

“It’s shocking,” says [Dr. David] Ludwig, [director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center and one of the article’s authors] “how little we consider food quality in the management of chronic diseases. And in the case of SNAP that failure costs taxpayers twice: We pay once when low-income families buy junk foods and sugary beverages with SNAP benefits, and we pay a second time when poor diet quality inevitably increases the costs of health care in general, and Medicaid and Medicare in particular.”

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One of the challenges with watching old movies with your kids is that the mores have changed radically in the last half century. Many old cartoons are staggeringly racist. Almost everything made before, say, 1985 is egregiously sexist; there’s one awkward sequence in Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer, for example, when Rudolph’s mother and Clarissa, his girlfriend, don’t chase after the red-nosed runaway because they are women, and they know it’s not their place. The men in old movies are forever on the verge of date rape (the old cartoons, too; I’m looking at you, Pepe LePew), always quick to resort to violence, to fix a stiff drink, to blow secondhand smoke in a child’s face, to slap a woman across the face to prepare her for lovemaking, to gay-bash. Is that how society was in the forties? I don’t know, but I’m not entirely comfortable exposing my kids to it.

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Mattel is the maker of Barbie and Hot Wheels, but this year its top selling toy is a plastic cell phone case, according to the Financial Times (subscription required):

 Whether a new Kindle Fire, or a hand-me-down iPad, analysts predict 2012 will be the year children as young as three-years-old will unwrap tablets at trendsetting rates. And that has the traditional toy companies scrambling to stay relevant.

“The top two guys, Mattel and Hasbro, they are terrified,” said Sean McGowan, managing director of equity research at Needham & Company, an investment banking firm. “They should be terrified, but the official party line is they’re not terrified.”

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Have I mentioned I hate the Elf on the Shelf?

Once upon a time, long ago in 2005, a lady named Carol Aebersold self-published a book about her innocuous holiday tradition. It was the story of an elf who would appear in your home after Thanksgiving to quietly observe how well the family was behaving, report back to Santa at the North Pole each night and reappear somewhere else in the household the next day. Whimsical!

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