The efforts seem to be paying off, with sales of Barbie dolls rising 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter after falling in double-digit percentages in the prior eight quarters.
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Mattel announced the new line Thursday on its website and in a Time magazine article featuring the cover headline, “Now can we stop talking about my body?”
“These new dolls represent a line that is more reflective of the world girls see around them”, Evelyn Mazzocco, Global General Manager of Barbie, told the Los Angeles Times.
The Barbie stash of my 18-year-old daughter, Meg, is packed away in an eponymous suitcase, having not been played with in about a decade.
Now, nearly 57 years and over a billion Barbies later, Jewish children-and many other people for whom tall, skinny, and blonde is not the norm-will be able to purchase a version of world’s most popular doll that actually looks like us.
“Why does Mattel need to use physical attributes to describe the doll?” asked Rosenberg, who said packaging should instead focus on the doll’s career or education. For 2016 they have Super-Hero Girls, replicas of comic book heroes such as Wonder Woman, which will also have an animated TV show and Lego tie-in.
However, labeling the dolls as curvy, tall and petite bothered some on social media.
Of course, where would Barbie be without her in-house salon?
Mattel’s new dolls wear less makeup, addressing a shift in the beauty industry that suggests “less is more”.
And one courageous young cancer survivor is petitioning the company to make her more widely available, including in Australia. We’re not sure what software was available. But just because some of us believe that larger proportioned dolls are ultimately good for a society that considers itself supportive of women, we can’t know if consumer dollars will follow.
These were the Barbies for sale at the end of the tour.
Some critics took to Twitter last week to complain that Mattel’s “curvy” dolls were still too thin.
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Still, Barbie – donning a new pair of sandals – is taking a step in the right direction.
