Getting on the wrong side of the law is never a good idea. Scenes of cops chasing criminals have enthralled movie audiences for decades, with all kinds of exotic car chases and excellent getaway scenes through urban landscapes.

In Paris, many tourists for the Olympic Games were amused when they encountered the city’s squadron of rollercops - i.e. police officers on roller skates. Since 2001, the Paris rollercops have been patrolling tourist sites around the city in an effort to combat tourist-specific crimes, such as pickpocketing and petition scams. We’re sure 8 wheels come in handy when the time comes to chase down a suspect, but we’re not quite sure what happens when said suspect goes up a flight of steps or down a cobbled alley. It doesn't sound a great movie script, either.

A far more extreme application did the rounds on the internet in November last year, where Taliban security forces are shown rollerblading through the streets of Kabul, dressed in camo gear and armed with serious guns. This video looks more like a PlayStation game than real life!

Speaking of movies, it's amazing how the horror film industry takes everyday items and turns them into pure evil. That's the whole point of why it's scary, right? Well, read on for a story of a doll released by Mattel in the 90s that made a strong case for itself to be included in the next scream-inducing cinema release.

And taking us back to law and order, Dominique Olivier's fast facts this week are based on unusual rules. There are some really funny examples in there!

In her opinion piece this week, Dominique has written on the pet industry and just how huge it has become, with a generation of pet owners who seem to be choosing dogs over babies. There are good reasons why Millennials are having far smaller families, as she discusses in this great piece>>>

That's it from us - have a great Sunday!

The Finance Ghost (follow on X) | Dominique Olivier (connect on LinkedIn)

TL;DR: When Mattel released a doll in 1996 that could eat plastic snacks, they didn’t expect it to start snacking on children.

The year was 1994. Toymaker Mattel had just gotten the rights to make Cabbage Patch dolls and knew they needed something special to recapture the magic that made these dolls so popular in the early 1980s. The plan? Create a series of Cabbage Patch dolls with new and exciting features.

By the holiday season of 1996, they thought they had a winner with their latest creation - the Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime Kid dolls. These dolls came with plastic toy snacks like carrots, celery, a wafer cookie, and a french fry. The concept was simple: kids would feed the snacks to the dolls, and a battery-powered motor would move the snack through the doll’s mouth and down into a backpack where the child could retrieve it.

You can see the original (mildly terrifying) ad at this link.

Once the commercials aired, Snacktime Kid dolls shot to the top of Christmas wish lists across America, and by the end of the year, Mattel had sold over half a million of them.

It seemed like a runaway success until a serious problem emerged. You see, the motor that moved the doll's mouth didn't have an off switch, and it couldn’t go in reverse. For kids with long hair, this was a disaster waiting to happen. Sure enough, by the end of the year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) started receiving reports of the dolls “eating” multiple children’s hair.

One of the most well-known incidents involved 7-year-old Sarah Stevens, who got her hair caught in her Snacktime Kid doll while (ironically) waiting for her mother at a hair salon. It took three people over 30 minutes to free her hair from the doll, and the story quickly gained national attention. Photos were taken, and soon the media was all over it. Other parents started sharing their own horror stories, with one calling the Snacktime doll “the doll from hell” and a reporter comparing it to the demented Chucky doll from the Child’s Play movies.

Now, it’s important to mention that the motor in these dolls wasn’t strong enough to actually hurt a child - just to tangle their hair. Most incidents were resolved by simply cutting the hair that got caught. Out of the hundreds of thousands of dolls sold, only 35 incidents were reported by the end of 1996. After Sarah Stevens’ story made headlines, that number jumped to about 100. In the grand scheme of things, that’s just 0.0002% of all the dolls sold.

Still, it wasn’t exactly a good look.

Even though the percentage was tiny, Mattel couldn’t ignore the issue. They launched new safety tests and worked with the CPSC, who also conducted their own tests. Neither found any serious safety hazards, but with more incidents being reported, Mattel decided to take action. They offered full refunds to anyone who wanted to return the doll and started working on a warning label. By early January 1997, as incident reports reached the 100 mark, Mattel decided it was best to pull the dolls off store shelves completely.

In the wake of this PR disaster, one couple attempted to sue Mattel for $25 million due to the Snacktime doll eating some of their daughter’s hair. They claimed the amount was for emotional and physical damage. As you can probably guess, that lawsuit didn’t go anywhere.

An assortment of facts that will take you only a minute to read.

• Firefighters are legally allowed to scoop water out of people's swimming pools to put out fires.

• ​Sending someone a thumbs-up emoji is contractually binding in Canada.

• In 2023, Ford patented a self-driving car that can repossess itself, should its owner fall behind on payments. 

• On at least three occasions in the last 16 years, the government of Shanghai has tried and failed to stop people from wearing pyjamas outdoors.

• Until the 19th century, if someone shouted, "Stop, thief!" in your vicinity, you had no choice but to try and stop the thief. You were legally obliged on pain of being arrested and facing a penalty for not chasing the thief. Maybe best to keep a pair of rollerblades handy?