We give Barbie a lot of shit here at Scanner—for her tramp stamp, for being too skinny, for not acting her age and even for making a skeezy porno—but you know what? Fuck that. Barbie brought us a lot of joy back when we were wearing Kissing Coolers and thought that Sesame Street was our "soap opera." Yeah, maybe we'd give her spiky hair cuts and put crazy colors in her spiky platinum 'do with washable markers, but she still loved us and we loved her. And when we were growing up in a government-subsidized townhouse in the meth capitol of the world, you can bet your ass there was nowhere we'd rather have lived than Barbie's Dream House. So forgive us if we're a little too excited about the life-sized Barbie Dream House that opened in Shanghai on Friday.
The House of Barbie, a six-story, hot-pink shrine to the doll—who turns 50 today—boasts a chandelier made of blonde hair, a closet stocked with 100 pairs of pink patent-leather pumps and a kitchen that exists solely for the purpose of baking cupcakes.
Of course, this Barbietopia is also a retail location. And the China market is one reason Mattel chose Shanghai for the flagship store.
Here, dolls range in price from $10 to $200 — for a Barbie in a Vera Wang wedding dress. But is Barbie too blond, too expensive for the China market? At a Shanghai primary school, opinion is divided.
"She's really pretty," says Wang Yiqi, looking longingly at Barbie's pink frilly miniskirt. The 11-year-old is a marketer's dream: she recognizes the specially designed $35 Shanghai Barbie and can't wait to go to the store. Others aren't quite as positive.
"I've got one just like this at home," says 7-year-old Yang Fangchen, "and it only cost $3, and she has a set of extra clothing."
Mrs. Wu, who's picking up her granddaughter, is horrified to hear of the price. "People of my generation find that really expensive. It's definitely not worth it."
In China, Barbie's world is likely to be full of impersonators. Xu Quanning, secretary general of the Shanghai Toy Trade Association, says that Barbie look-alikes for just $1 or $2 were far outselling the real doll.
But don't worry, there is no mass-market Chinese Barbie at the House of Barbie, though Mattell created a special doll which their calling "a pan-Asian likeness" (above right) for the store's opening.
[NPR: Mattel Hopes Shanghai Is A Barbie World]
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