flickering pictures

Mao would be pissed.

Along with a bar and hair salon, the store offers 38,000 square feet of blonde-haired, big-boobed dolls. Despite its location, only 10 per cent of the store’s dolls will look Asian, apparently because of Mattel research that indicates Chinese girls and young women want American-looking Barbies.

The GlobalPost reports:

The plan is to turn America’s favorite doll into fashion fodder for China’s upwardly mobile, trend-setting elite. By moving up-market and focusing on Barbie-branded merchandise, the company hopes to widen profit margins and attract a new demographic: Chinese women.

But, will they buy it?

Summer Wang, an assistant at a film production company, certainly will. “Barbie is beautiful like a princess,” she said. “And every Shanghai girl wants to be a princess.”

For Wang, Barbie represents affluence and glamor. She wanted the doll as a girl, but her family could not afford it (the doll retails for about 60 yuan, or about $9, in Shanghai). Now, at 24, she plans to visit the store to get a Barbie-style makeover.

Launched on Barbie’s 50th birthday, the new store is a response to Mattel’s sinking profits, which dipped 46 per cent in the 4th quarter of 2008, and if it works, the company hopes to set up similar superstores around the world.

A few little-known Barbie facts, via Wikpedia:

• Barbie has more than 40 pets, including a panda and a zebra.
• Originally from Wisconsin, she moved to Manhattan for high school.
• For some reason she still works as a flight attendant, even though she’s a fully licensed airline pilot. She has also worked as an astronaut, doctor and NASCAR driver.
• Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice somehow decided that Barbie is “Jewish,” and found that “with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, [the dolls’] are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West.
• The typical Barbie collector is 40 years old.
• “In 1997 Mattel joined forces with Nabisco to launch a cross-promotion of Barbie with Oreo cookies. Oreo Fun Barbie was marketed as someone with whom little girls could play after class and share “America’s favorite cookie.” As had become the custom, Mattel manufactured both a white and a black version. Critics argued that in the African American community Oreo is a derogatory term meaning that the person is “black on the outside and white on the inside,” like the chocolate sandwich cookie itself. The doll was unsuccessful and Mattel recalled the unsold stock, making it sought after by collectors.”

Image via The Guardian.

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