NEW YORK — When it comes to Barbie’s body, it will no longer be one size fits all.
An undated handout image released by Mattel Inc on Friday shows several of the newly-released Barbie dolls featuring three new body types (tall, curvy and petite) as well as seven new skin tones, 22 eye colours and 24 hair styles as part of the 2016 'Fashionistas' line in El Segundo, California. (EPA photo)
On Thursday, Mattel Inc unveiled curvy, petite and tall versions of its iconic fashion doll whose unrealistically thin shape has attracted criticism for decades. The three new body types will also be sold in an assortment of skin tones, eye colours and hairstyles.
The move is about more than just making Barbie look different. While Barbie was once Mattel’s powerhouse brand, sales have plummeted in recent years as the doll has struggled to remain relevant to little girls who do not look like her and who play with toys other than dolls.
“This is about drawing a wider demographic that had turned away from Barbie back to Barbie,” said Jim Silver, the editor of TTPM, a toy review website.
Barbie’s latest makeover began in a big way last year, when Mattel released a broad assortment of dolls in a greater number of skin tones, eye colours and even facial structures as part of its Fashionistas line.
“I think today, frankly more so than any other time, Barbie is truly representing what girls see,” said Richard Dickson, who is Mattel’s president and chief operating officer and the executive in charge of Barbie’s reinvention.
But some industry experts and academics have long doubted that cosmetic changes — whether racial or ethnic or body shapes — can revive the popularity of the 57-year-old Barbie, whose sales have been declining by double digits in recent years.
Executives like Dickson have been optimistic, pointing to signs that Barbie’s in-store sales began picking up last year. Still, third-quarter sales in 2015 — the most recent figures available — showed that Barbie sales declined 14% from the same period a year earlier.
The slumping sales may also be partly attributed to the shift away from traditional toys toward electronics and games in recent years, as many parents and children have clamored for less gender-specific toys.
Companies like GoldieBlox have sprung up to offer girls more career-oriented toys, and even Lego, the world’s top toymaker, has had to alter its strategy and some of its building block lines to accommodate the growth in the market for learning toys that appeal to boys and girls.
Dickson has been steering Mattel’s marketing campaign to focus more on Barbie’s career ambitions than her body image. A new “Imagine the Possibilities” ad, for example, features little girls (but no boys) picturing themselves as teachers, coaches and other professionals.
Still, Mattel executives have struggled to rebrand Barbie as an aspirational figure, one not so closely identified with her unnatural body measurements.
“It’s hardly a bolt of genius to say ‘Let’s make dolls that look different’,” said Sean McGowan, an analyst with Oppenheimer and Company.
“It’s more like saying ‘Yeah, we stuck with that one single iconic image for too long, let’s try multiple ones’.”
The new set of dolls was reported earlier by Time magazine on Thursday and is available for pre-order online.
The dolls are expected to hit store shelves at major retailers in March, according to a Mattel spokesman, Alex Clark.