After 43 years of dating, Barbie has decided to dump Ken - and she has her eyes on an Australian beach boy, writes Lauren Weber.
Barbie and Ken have gone the way of J.Lo and Ben. Following much public speculation about Ken's sexual orientation and Barbie's busy schedule (she does, after all, have 90 careers), the pair have decided to split.
"After 43 years of dating, Barbie and Ken have drifted apart," said Russell Arons, vice-president of marketing at Barbie and Ken's parent company, Mattel this week.
"There are a lot of successful career women out there who don't want to get tied down."
On the eve of the 101st annual American International Toy Fair in Manhattan, a major event when US retailers try to identify the next toy trends and place orders for the Christmas season, Mattel says Barbie, born in 1959, will reclaim her identity as a California girl with a "carefree and independent look".
Maybe Barbie got bored with Ken. Maybe she realised she didn't need a man in order to be happy. Maybe Ken came out of the closet. But perhaps, say marketing experts, Mattel wanted to shed a doll that may have been an unprofitable drag on the Barbie name.
"This pretend-boyfriend thing probably just wasn't helping sales any more," suggests John Lister, chairman of Lister Butler Consulting, a Manhattan-based brand identity firm.
Arons disputes that version of the story. "The breakup of Barbie and Ken has nothing to do with Ken's sales. They've been strong all along," she says.
She adds that Ken will remain on shelves. And hopefully he won't take it too personally when Barbie starts dating again.
Arons hinted that by autumn, Barbie will have her eye on a new Mattel character, an Australian beach boy named Blaine.
The shift gives Mattel some freedom to play around with Barbie's identity. "This allows Mattel to offer more competitive versions of Barbie," Lister says.
Mattel may indeed be feeling pressure to freshen up the Barbie icon. With sales of $3.6 billion in 2003, Barbie ranks as the top-selling doll brand in the world.
But competitors are catching up, and Mattel has been scrambling to develop its own alternatives to offerings including MGA Entertainment's Bratz line of hip-hop dolls targeted at girls aged nine to 12, or "tweens", as they are known to marketers.
Mattel recently launched the "My Scene" line of Barbie dolls to compete with Bratz.
In some respects, the breakup itself allows Mattel to put a contemporary spin on the popular doll line.
"It's probably a good thing, for these American icons to continue, that they represent phases that real families go through," says Thomas Conley, president of the Toy Industry Association. "Everything's fair in love and war," he adds.
- (Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service)