Online Barbie

Mattel has reeeally taken advantage of the internet as an interactive marketing tool for Barbie. Trying to navigate her various websites (she has several,) is actually very overwhelming. There are so many glittery, flashing links and images everywhere, and so much to do that you could literally spend an entire day exploring everything the sites have to offer. The issue I have with the interactive sites though is they are purely materialistic. You can shop for Barbie, visit her closet to pick out her outfits, and give her makeovers. Can you enact various careers for Barbie? No. What fun would that be right? If kids are role-playing careers, how are they going to see all the online clothes they can dress their Barbies in online, which conveniently can also be purchased for their Barbies at home.

What I really found off-putting was the everythinggirl.com link to a "Barbie Grown-ups" section. This portion of the site is supposed to give parents ideas about how to interact with their preschoolers. One of the suggestions was a spa day. With facial masks and manis and pedis and all. I'm 20 years old and have never had a facial in my life. Do 4 or 5 year olds really need to be taught that to be feminine you have to have spa days to make yourself beautiful? That's the underlying connotation I get from that part of the website. Isn't it enough that girls are giving their virtual Barbies makeovers? I don't think they need encouragement to feel makeovers for themselves are necessary too.

The best part of the Barbie websites is that you have to be a member to visit any of the interactive portions of the sites. So what does that mean? It means little girls have to register an email address to be able to play with online Barbie. A lot of kids don't actually have email addresses, and why should they when they're 4 or 5 years old? So they have to register with mom or dad's address. Conveniently for Mattel, that means they can unabashedly send promotional emails with all the latest must-have accessories that parents have to buy for their kids. If kids have their own email addresses, that's even better for Mattel because they can send their merciless promotional emails directly to their target audience.

Making kids want to have all the newest products for Barbie fuels Mattel's bank account, but fuels kids' inclination toward materialism too. Child marketers such as Mattel have done a good job at programming kids to be consumers. Mattel has taken advantage of online tools to market the insane amount of products for Barbie, and from a marketing perspective they are doing a damn good job of it. My problem with these marketing strategies is the lack of substance they are selling to kids. Being an "everything girl," like Barbie boasts to be, includes being an excellent shopper and socialite, and nothing more. But that's really all that any girl should want to be anyway, right? According to Mattel, it is.