Action Tellers Barbie and Ken.

They were looking for personable young men and women at Washington Mutual Bank, Seattle, back during the Christmas holidays. In fact, they were in considerable demand, but you had to be 12-inches tall and made of plastic in order to qualify.

If you met the requirements, Washington Mutual would outfit you with your own wardrobe (including a change of clothing), a custom teller card, a tote bag and a cell phone and would market you to consumers as an exclusive WaMu Action Teller, $19.95 plus shipping and handling.

A bank spokeswoman said the promotion developed out of "tongue-in cheek" television advertisements that implied that the bank's employees were superstars. One commercial depicted customers ignoring Regis Philbin in their rush to get the autograph of one of the bank's loan consultants. Other ads depicted customers seeking teller tracing cards and action figures.

Soon, customers were asking where they could buy one of the miniature tellers as gifts. Bank personnel realized they had stumbled upon a way to build brand identification and customer loyalty, so they ordered production to begin in time for the Christmas shopping season. It was, by all accounts, a successful promotion, although officials say no effort was made to correlate purchases with new accounts, mortgage loans or anything that might affect the bottom line.

The dolls ... um, action figures ... came in both male and female versions and in several ethnic variations. They were available at most of the bank's 2,000 or so branches around the country. Purchase of a Happy Meal was not required.