Barbie and Ken, backwards when they mattered.
Poor Barbie. She’s rattling struggling.
The embonpoint Mattel chick used to be the Queen of All Kids Toys. But in the instance few decades she has had to withstand glares and accusations from moms who wanted more than meet awing clothes and well-tanned men for their daughters. A leader tried to intend her outlawed.
More recently, she lost in a competition with a bunch of likewise prefabricated up, tween-aged Bratz. And then the fact no once powerful beauty ever wants to recon with: turning the big 5-0. Late terminal year, she was accused of enabling bad, intense people.
Now this, Barbra Millicent Robert’s stylish indignity: the exclusive accumulation devoted only to her — unsealed amid the squander outlay of excessive incomes in foreign-brands dry Shanghai — is slated to be closed.
Mattel, Inc., unsealed the 36,000 square-foot space digit eld past in an area of downtown Shanghai that’s filled with wealth sort retailers. There was lots of sound neon light, a make-up department, a hotel and a fancy bar. The inaugural of the accumulation coincided with Barbie’s half-century birthday and included the unveiling of a Asiatic Barbie. There was a $10,000 Vera Wang ceremony gown.
And yet — no customers. Or at least, not sufficiency to reassert its size. On Monday, the sound neons were extinguished, the glass doors locked. Barbies all over the six-story unfortunate no doubt violent at their synthetic hair in agony.
But if we learned anything from Toy Story 3, it’s that Barbie’s no quitter. Neither are the grouping who handle her.
In the kind of joint head-in-the-sand talk, here’s what a spokeswoman for Barbie in China, Linda Du, wrote to reporters in an e-mail about the store’s approaching [from the Los Angeles Times]:
The Shanghai Barbie accumulation “has successfully realised its mission to encourage the overall Barbie sort over the terminal digit eld …” “In 2011, Mattel module roll discover a newborn Barbie sort strategy in China designed to take the sort across the country reaching more consumers.”
Retail contriver in Asia, Apostle French, was a lowercase more blunt: he said the accumulation was likewise big and the estimation of Asiatic women likewise little, in that Mattel assumed they would crowd to immature brands all the Japanese with Hello Kitty.
Oh, Barbie. Is it meet instance to secure up your heels?
Photo: JoeMabel via wikicommons
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