Does a doll need to have mettle, and not just made by Mattel?

Mattel’s reasons for giving a 57-year-old icon a makeover are no doubt honourable. Shoring up bottomlines is part of the dharma of management, and the fact that Barbie’s sales have slipped steadily since 2012 — including 14% just this quarter — cannot be ignored.

While it may be comforting for some to read into this a rejection of the Barbie school of body imagery, the decision by Mattel this year to provide her with multiple avatars — three body shapes, seven skin tones, 22 eye colours and 24 hairstyles — portends a certain panic. Can one 12-inch plastic toy really be all things to all people? Should she even be expected to be so? 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.

Imbuing a toy with the onerous burden of being a role model rather than just a plaything points to the possible (and more alarming) absence of better candidates close by for such youthful adulation. That could be what prompts fear in the minds of concerned consumers and strategies in that of toymakers — leading to this droll move for doll diversification. But will sales figures also begin to look the opposite of the original Barbie as a result?