Hooray for Child Labor!

Ok, ok. I know that my blog has of late been nothing more than pithy commentary with the occasional side dish of snark. It's not my fault! Japan is clearly out of control:


Baby Mop from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

First You Can Shave the Baby, now this! What do the Japanese think babies are? Certainly not smaller versions of themselves. This complete de-personification of their young baffles me. The gorier aspect of floor cleaning, namely the use of soap and water, is totally circumvented in the ad. Were this to be a real depiction of Baby Mop, and using a real baby instead of what I'm convinced was a jacked up robot baby, here's how it would play out:

A young Japanese woman purchases Baby Mop once her child reaches the working-age of three months. After running a bucket of warm, soapy water, she puts the baby in Baby Mop, dunks the child and places the soaking tyke on a dingy floor. The baby begins to wail in protest, not crawling about and not squealing with happiness. The woman scratches her head, rereads the directions and regards the now furious baby. Faced with the decision of a clean floor or a contented baby, the woman fashiones a stick and digs it into the back of her child. Twenty minutes later, she has a clean floor and a quiet, lifeless young one!