![]() ![]() Leading the pack is Hello Barbie, the world’s first artificial intelligence-enabled Barbie doll, a hi-tech conversationalist that landed the cover of The New York Times Magazine in the run up to its November release, accompanied by the headline “Now I have a Brain!” With sluggish sales and Mattel’s blockbuster American Girl, a somewhat more wholesome PC rival nipping at her candy pink mules, it’s time for Barbie to get real.Ĭuriously perhaps, the brains behind the original Barbie design, in all her pneumatic-breasted glory, was a woman, Ruth Handler. That’s why the world of Barbie is evolving.” ![]() Stepping down from her princess pedestal with the aid of a new flexible flat foot that, according to Dixon, has “liberated Barbie from high heels”, the new Everywoman Barbie (recently resculpted in three “real woman” body types – tall, petite and curvy) even comes with her own Darwinesque hashtag, #TheDollEvolves and slogan: “Imagination comes in all shapes and sizes. “It’s a far cry from the Barbies of dated ethnic old,” he declared at a recent conference in Los Angeles. The concept is in line with what Richard Dixon, president and chief operating officer of Barbie’s California-based maker Mattel, described as an ambitious “diversity revolution” for the plastic icon. Make that Barbies, because, for her sixth run for the Oval Office, the plastic pop-culture icon will be sold as a two-doll Barbie president and vice-president set in a range of skin tones. Another female presidential candidate is set to enter the race this Autumn: Barbie.
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