Mattel says Barbie sales edge higher

She is, after all, just a toy, created as a progression of the archetypal baby doll, whose chubby cheeks and long-lashed eyes could well be pilloried today too for promoting the notion of puella aeterna – the eternal girl who never wants to grow up.

The a year ago, however, hasn’t been plain sailing for Mattel.

The El Segundo, Calif., toy company said it will still sell the original 11.5-inch Barbie. Monday morning, for example, Mattel and Amazon.com Inc. disclosed a production deal to make American Girl specials for Amazon’s Prime video.

Game Developer Barbie comes with a gaming headset and a laptop on which she appears to be designing a platformer. Barbie will soon come in three body shapes – tall, petite and curvy. But the thing that most caught my eye is that she’s wearing flat sneakers in lieu of the Barbie trademark stiletto heels. The new versions will begin arriving on US store shelves in March and will roll out globally after that.

“These new dolls represent a line that is more reflective of the world girls see around them – they allow girls to find a doll that speaks to them”, explained Mattel U.S.’s Evelyn Mazzocco.

The toy maker said it plans to capitalize on Barbie’s sales growth.

But other toy manufacturers were not going to stand still and in the last few years Barbie has faced competition from a whole host of new dolls vying for girls’ and their parents’ favour. That’s because competition from new girl lines, such as Lego Friends, and from updated and sometimes edgier doll brands with more appeal for 21st-century kids has eaten into Barbie’s market share.

But Kris Macomber, who teaches sociology at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, says she’s “reluctant to celebrate Barbie’s new strategy because it doesn’t change the fact that Barbie dolls and other kinds of fashion dolls still over-emphasize female beauty”. In the past, when she’s taken her 3-year-old daughter to Target, “I avoid the Barbie aisle”. Back then, the doll wore a black and white swimsuit, black heals and had white sunglasses tucked into her blonde hair.