AMERICA'S hottest toy dolls are no longer blond-haired, blue-eyed beauties named Barbie. They're brown-skinned, black-eyed ones named "Sweet Sasha" and "Marvelous Malia". Sasha and Malia are the names of President Barack Obama's daughters. First Lady Michelle Obama protested the toy company's use of her daughters' names, but that hasn't slowed the dolls' popularity. They are selling for more than $90 online despite having a retail value of only about $7. This is surprising, considering that dark-skinned dolls have never sold well in the US. One famous American psychology experiment once found that even black girls preferred to play with white dolls. They identified white dolls as "nice" and black dolls as "bad". Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus writes that if "hawking ‘Sweet Sasha' and ‘Marvelous Malia' encourages children of any hue to want an African-American doll, or to admire two African-American girls whose father just happens to be president, maybe that's not such a bad trade-off."