BusinessWeek Reports: Mattel’s second-quarter earnings look good, but worldwide sales of its iconic doll fell 1% as little girls favor interactive toys over Barbie

Says BusinessWeek:

Fixing the Barbie franchise won’t be easy. Brand and toy experts believe that dolls just don’t capture the imagination of young girls anymore. According to research firm NPD Group, sales of dolls fell 2% in 2005, following a 6% decline in sales in 2004. And even within the doll segment, Barbie wasn’t a leader anyway— large dolls saw an 18% surge in sales and sales of soft dolls rose 13% in 2005.

“Barbie is never going to be the profitable doll that she once was,” says Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a brand strategy company. “The marketplace for toys has changed so dramatically” (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/12/05, “Hasbro Plays Nice With Tweens”).

Far be it from us to disagree with BusinessWeek, however now that we have had our 5th consecutive day with traffic over 55,000 page views were getting a little cocky and have taken it upon us to see if we couldn’t find a new look or two for Barbie to help her recapture the imagination of today’s savvy young girls.

After studying teen demographics, spending time on MySpace, and surfing the web we didn’t have to look hard to find several possible new looks for Barbie.

The first builds on the well-known fact that young girls like hip-hop music. Kayne West, Jay Z, and Eminem all appeal to teen and pre-teen girls so why not have a Barbie that builds on this trend? We decided to go “old school” and in the spirit of NWA we bring you Gansta Bitch Barbie(tm):

The next look for Barbie should build on the music of Marilyn Manson and other goth bands:

For the Facebook crowd:

For little brothers:

To help build awareness that life is not necessarily all “Malibu Barbie”:

And to provide an alternative to heteronormative lifestyles:

Of course, in reality Mattel is already implementing part of this strategy (see “Hooker Barbie“).

(More here and probably a hundred other places).

h/t: Dr. Hoist

tags: mattel Barbie

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 8:22 pm by Insider and is filed under Not the conventional wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.