First JuicyCampus, now this.

UK-based www.missbimbo.com claims to target girls as young as 9 to find their inner tramp.  A player’s ultimate goal is to get a “fun job to pay for your needs and all the clothes a bimbo could possibly want” and “become the trendsetting bimbo in town.” To do this, a player must do whatever it takes, even resorting to extensive ”meds or plastic surgery.” You pay for stuff with “bimbo dollars,” and if you run out of the free ones, you must send text messages costing £1.50 each or use PayPal to replenish your account.  The tagline? “Become the hottest, coolest most famous bimbo ever.”  The site claims to have over 380,000 registered players, mostly girls age 9 to 16.

The site was created by Nicholas Jacquart, a French entrepreneur who started with Ma-Bimbo and its 1.2 million subscribers.  Parents are tweaking.  A father says he was appalled when he saw his 9 and 14 year old daughters ”looking at possible breast operations and facelifts for their bimbos at the game’s plastic surgery clinic.”  And you just know that’s gonna cost a whole lotta £1.50s!

Based on what I do for a living I’m not often the one to argue that movies/comics/games are corrupting our youth, but the site’s claims that it is “simply mirrors real life in a tongue-in-cheek way, [and that] the missions and goals for the bimbos are morally sound and teach children about the real world” are, I hope, over everyone’s line.

But chin up:  the site has done away with the diet pills feature, and you can send your bimbo to college (to find a “sugar daddy,” but it’s still college!). 

missbimbo.comma-bimbomiss bimbo.com

Slingo, Inc. released an announcement today that was chock-full of interesting information from a new Magid report about online casual gaming. Perhaps most notable is the target audience for such free games: women aged 35-65. Yes, the same women who buy the family car, make the banking decisions and hold sway over most discretionary income in many households are spending north of 10 hours per month playing games – and potentially seeing video advertisements – online.

This will be fresh ground for most marketers who seek this coveted demographic. And maybe I’ll finally learn how to play Sudoku, but I doubt it.