Computer Engineer Barbie is the 126th career version of Mattel's Barbie doll. In response to poll results indicating strong support for computer engineers, the doll set was created and introduced in 2010. In 2014, Mattel apologized for the accompanying book, I Can Be a Computer Engineer, after complaints that it represented Barbie as incompetent in the field, needing the help of men.
The doll has a pink laptop and a pink smartphone, and is wearing geometric pink glasses, a pink watch, black leggings, a T-shirt decorated with "Barbie" spelled in binary code, a fitted vest with saddle-stitch detailing, pink wedges, and a Bluetooth headset. [1] [2] The packaging included a code to unlock exclusive game content on the Barbie website. [3] Female engineers including Betty Shanahan, CEO of the Society of Women Engineers, and Alice Agogino of the National Academy of Engineering were consulted on her wardrobe and work environment. [1] [3] [4] [5] They suggested that for authenticity she needed "a Coke can and a bag of Doritos" on her desk; she has a coffee cup. One mockup also included a Linux penguin; [4] Barbie is running Linux on her dual-monitor set-up. [6]
In 2010, Mattel invited people to vote for Barbie's 126th career, the first instance of this in the company's history. Voters were able to choose between five choices: computer engineer, architect, environmentalist, news anchor, and surgeon. [7] Although girls preferred news anchor, computer engineer was the most popular choice in online polling, [4] partly because of promotion by the Society of Women Engineers. [1] [3] [6] The two dolls were launched together at the 2010 American International Toy Fair. [3] [4]
Many writers for tech publications and other reviewers were encouraged by the choice of career, hoping it would encourage girls to consider careers in computer science. [2] [4] [8] [9] However, the amount of pink, the hairstyle, and the stylish clothes struck some women as unrealistic and stereotyped. [2]
The accompanying book, I Can Be a Computer Engineer, was issued in 2013 together with I Can Be an Actress. [10] [11] The book received extensive criticism, especially beginning in November 2014, for depicting Barbie as relying on two male friends to program the game she is designing. [9] [11] [12] In addition, they need to help her after she accidentally infects her and her sister Skipper's computer with a virus (via the pink heart-shaped USB stick she wears around her neck), after ignoring advice from her (female) computer teacher. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
A website was created to enable people to replace segments of the book's text with their own, [18] and Mattel pulled the title from Amazon after many critical reviews. [19] The publisher stated it was being discontinued. [20] A Mattel spokesperson said that the book had first been published in 2010 and was outdated, [11] and the company apologized. [9] [15] [16] [17] The book's Barbie says she's "only creating the design ideas" and that her two male friends will have to do the coding; the author, who proclaimed herself a feminist, said her assignment had been to portray Barbie as a designer and "regrets that she may have let stereotypes slip into the book". [20]
In response to the complaints of the book, Mattel posted an apology on their official Facebook page for Barbie, stating that the "portrayal of Barbie in this specific story doesn't reflect the Brand's vision for what Barbie stands for." [21]
Mattel, Inc. is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in Los Angeles by Harold Matson and the husband-and-wife duo of Ruth and Elliot Handler in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. Mattel has a presence in 35 countries and territories; its products are sold in more than 150 countries. Mattel consists of three business segments: North America, International and American Girl.
Barbie is a fashion doll created by American businesswoman Ruth Handler, manufactured by American toy and entertainment company Mattel and introduced on March 9, 1959. The toy was based on the German Bild Lilli doll which Handler had purchased while in Europe. The figurehead of an eponymous brand that includes a range of fashion dolls and accessories, Barbie has been an important part of the toy fashion doll market for over six decades. Mattel has sold over a billion Barbie dolls, making it the company's largest and most profitable line. The brand has expanded into a multimedia franchise since 1984, including video games, animated films, television/web series, and a live-action film.
Kenneth Sean "Ken" Carson Jr. is a fashion doll introduced by American toy company Mattel in 1961 as the counterpart of Barbie, who had been introduced two years earlier.
Ruth Marianna Handler was an American business magnate and inventor. She is best known for inventing the Barbie doll in 1959, and being co-founder of toy manufacturer Mattel with her husband Elliot, as well as serving as the company's first president from 1945 to 1975.
Bratz is an American fashion doll and media franchise created by former Mattel employee Carter Bryant for MGA Entertainment, which debuted in 2001.
Skipper Roberts is a doll created by Mattel in 1964 to be Barbie's young sister. Since 2009, she has a purple streak in her hair and is shown to have a tech-savvy personality. According to her fictional biography, Skipper calls herself a gadget girl who likes computers and trying out the latest technology. In the Barbie films, she likes to work on her photo blog. She had a starring role in the 2023 television film, Barbie: Skipper and the Big Babysitting Adventure.
Since Barbie's introduction as a teenage fashion model in 1959, the doll has been portrayed with many careers. Dolls are sold with sets of clothes and accessories that fit the career being portrayed. For example, the Lifeguard Barbie playset includes a Barbie, an outfit with shoes, a lifeguard chair, a dolphin, and a life preserver, while the Spanish Teacher Barbie includes a Barbie, an outfit with shoes, flashcards, a Spanish quiz, an easel, a notebook, a key chain, and a hairbrush.
Barbie is a multi-platform video game developed by Imagineering for Hi Tech Expressions. It is based on Mattel Inc.'s doll of the same name and was created in an attempt to get more girls to play video games. As such, it is one of the few explicitly girl-oriented NES games. The game takes place in a dream where Barbie must travel through three different worlds to gather accessories before attending a ball to meet Ken. Despite it having been of little interest to typical gamers at the time of its release, critics including staff writers for Velikij Drakon and Allgame have praised it as "not bad" for a generic platformer. Others including Justine Cassell and Nathanael Ng of the Georgia Institute of Technology have advanced the view that its genre is not appropriate for its content.
Chatty Cathy was a pull-string "talking" doll originally created by Ruth and Elliot Handler and manufactured by the Mattel toy company from 1959 to 1965. The doll was first released in stores and appeared in television commercials beginning in 1960, with a suggested retail price of $18.00, though usually priced under $10.00 in catalog advertisements. Chatty Cathy was on the market for six years and was the second most popular doll of the 1960s after Barbie.
Totally Hair Barbie is a fashion doll, in the Barbie line by Mattel, that was released in 1992. The doll's extra-long hair reached all the way to her toes and at the time, she had the longest hair ever for a Barbie doll at 11.5 inches in length. She is notable for being the highest selling Barbie doll in history, having racked up $100 million worldwide in 1992.
My Scene is an American series of fashion dolls that Mattel released in 2002. They were discontinued in the US in 2008, and worldwide in 2011. Mattel's Barbie character was one of the dolls in the toy line. The My Scene dolls' bodies were slim, similar to earlier Barbie dolls, but their heads were larger. The New York Times described their features as "exaggerated lips and bulging, makeup-caked eyes." My Scene were designed to appeal to the tween market and compete with the Bratz dolls from MGA Entertainment.
Teen Talk Barbie is an edition of Mattel's Barbie doll, introduced in 1992, that incorporates a voice box programmed to speak one of four randomly selected phrases when a button is pushed. It became controversial because one of the spoken phrases was "Math class is tough", and was also later used for a protest wherein some dolls had the voice boxes exchanged with those for Talking Duke G.I. Joe action figures produced by Hasbro.
Beginning with the release of an eponymous video game in 1984, Barbie, a fashion doll manufactured by American toy and entertainment company Mattel and debuted on March 9, 1959, has been featured in a media franchise predominantly consisting of a film series and media formats across technologies like television and the Internet. Since then, it has become one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time and has been referred to among fans as the "Barbie Cinematic Universe".
Monster High is an American multimedia-supported fashion doll franchise created by toy designer Garrett Sander and launched by Mattel in 2010. Aimed at children ages 7-14, the franchise features characters inspired by monster movies, sci-fi horror, thriller fiction, folklore, myths and popular culture, centering around the adventures of the teenage children of monsters and other mythical creatures attending a high school of the same name.
The Barbie Basics is a line of collector's edition Barbie dolls. They were created by Mattel designer Bill Greening and were introduced in late 2009 to be officially released in the spring of 2010.
Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse is a web series of CGI-animated shorts produced by Arc Productions and Mattel. The series was released on YouTube and the official Barbie website from January 20, 2012, to November 27, 2015.
Louvenia (Kitty) Black Perkins is an African American fashion designer. The majority of her career was spent designing clothing for Barbie dolls. She designed the first Black Barbie in the late 1970s; previous Black dolls in the line were marketed as Barbie's friends.
Detective Barbie is a series of three mystery themed point and click adventure games starring the character Barbie. The series consists of Detective Barbie In the Mystery of the Carnival Caper! (1998) Detective Barbie 2: The Vacation Mystery (1999), and Detective Barbie: The Mystery Cruise (2000). The first two games were developed by Gorilla Systems Corporation and published on the PC by Mattel Media/Mattel Interactive. The third game was developed for the PlayStation by Runecraft.
Casey Fiesler is an American associate professor at University of Colorado Boulder who studies technology policy, internet law and policy, and public communication.
