Shame on you, Mattel. The makers of Barbie dolls should have known that the blond haired pixie represented "destructive cultural and social consequences" to little Iranian girls according to the morality police.

This is a death sentence for Barbie.

"About three weeks ago they [the morality police] came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies," said a shopkeeper in a toy shop in northern Tehran.

Iran's religious rulers first declared Barbie, made by U.S. company Mattel Inc, un-Islamic in 1996, citing its "destructive cultural and social consequences". Despite the ban, the doll has until recently been openly on sale in Tehran shops.

The new order, issued around three weeks ago, forced shopkeepers to hide the leggy, busty blonde behind other toys as a way of meeting popular demand for the dolls while avoiding being closed down by the police.

A range of officially approved dolls launched in 2002 to counter demand for Barbie have not proven successful, merchants told Reuters.

The dolls named Sara, a female, and Dara, a male arrived in shops wearing a variety of traditional dress, with Sara fully respecting the rule that all women in Iran must obey in public, of covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting clothes.

"My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat," said Farnaz , a 38-year-old mother, adding that she could not find Barbie cartoon DVDs as she was told they were also banned from public sale.

Pointing to a doll covered in black long veil, a 40-year-old Tehran toy shop manager said: "We still sell Barbies but secretly and put these in the window to make the police think we are just selling these kinds of dolls."

P.J. O'Rourke once quippped that Islam is a religion that's perfect for the father of a teenage girl; every nightmare the girl has about being covered head to toe, being unable to date boys, and shut away until she's married comes true while any father would recognize Islam as the ideal way to raise a teen daughter.

If the morality police think that banning Barbie will save their society, they've got bigger problems than they can possibly imagine.