Barbie: Losing shine?

New York, March 5 (AFP): After nearly half a century of vamping up store shelves with her buxom chest and wasp waist, Barbie, the world’s favourite doll, is slowly but inescapably going out of style.

The golden locks are still lustrous, the accessories uncountable and the wardrobe crammed, but the grim reality is a seemingly irreversible drop in sales to depths unplumbed even by Scuba Barbie.

Following downturns in 2003 and 2004, sales of the jewel in the toymaker Mattel’s crown fell a further 13 per cent in 2005.

“We expected 2005 to be a challenging year and it was, as we continued to experience sales decline in the Barbie brand,” Mattel chairman Bob Eckert said at the end of January.

Reversing the company’s fortunes in 2006 would require “turning the tide” on the famous doll’s fortunes, Eckert said.

Fuelling Barbie’s mid-life crisis is the success of the pouting, street-savvy newcomers to the global dollhouse ? the Bratz line of dolls introduced by MGA Entertainment in 2001.

Promoted with the slogan “the only girls with a passion for fashion,” Bratz have morphed into a retail juggernaut that has roared off with a sizeable chunk of Barbie’s market share.

With their pouty lips, big heads, urban street clothes and names like Rock Angelz, Sisterz and Play Sportz, the new dolls are hot items for pre-teens who favour the belly-shirt fashion styles championed by the likes of pop princess Britney Spears.

Hal Diamond, an analyst at rating giant Standard and Poor’s, said Barbie had been “permanently weakened” by the sustained competition from the Bratz line.