Daddy? Can I have your credit card?

by Sigmund Leominster

Barbie Girl Home: VIP girls get SuperB Chat(TM) then shop for clothes and funky new furni

As a kid, I was never wanted to play with dolls. As a boy, calling them "Action Figures" didn't make it any more likely. At one time, I'm pretty sure I stripped one of my sister's Barbie dolls to check out the underlying anatomy, but the lack of genitalia and nipples meant that I lost interest pretty quickly. So the world of childhood doll play quietly passed me by.

Then I became a Capitalist. My initial puzzlement about why on earth people should want to mess around with plastic figurines gave way to the amazing discovery that the people at Mattel Corporation were actually making millions of dollars from this urge to dress mini-mannequins. Maybe billions. Now Barbie became much more interesting.

Today, Mattel, Inc. makes almost 100 million each year from its Barbie-related enterprise. Love her or hate her, she's pimped out by the boys in suits and her ill-gotten gains keep investors very happy indeed. She may be a slut but she's one of the world's most profitable sluts and as long as she keeps opening her legs, people will keep opening their wallets.

Alas, this year it seems Barbie has become the MILF of Dollywood with younger girls stealing away her clients. The sexually provocative and precocious teen Bratz(TM) dolls have been tempting people away from the WASPish icon. In their 2008 Second Quarter report, Mattel shows an 11% increase in net sales worldwide - but a 6% drop in Barbie-related sales. Seems like her pink slip is starting to show.

But there is a strategy, and that involves Barbie's new home: The Barbie Girls(TM) virtual world. Here, pre-pubescent girls can hang with other pre-pubescent girls, bi-curious pre-pubescent boys, emotionally retarded post-teens, and hopeful pedophiles. Put that way, it sounds more like Second Life than Barbie Life, but more than this, Barbie Girls embodies the spirit of capitalism in a much more overt way than Linden Labs can even dream of. Second Life entrepreneurs should take a leaf out of the Mattel sales book.

Joining Barbie Girls is simple. All you really need to do is click on an age bracket, give a name, choose a Barbie Girl name, and give a parental e-mail address. I clicked on "16 and above" (no need to lie), said I was Sigmund Leominster, chose my Barbie Girl name of Pixeleen, and gave my own e-mail address of sigmund.writer@gmail.com. That was basically it. I received an e-mail saying that my child had signed up for Barbie Girl and did I approve? Well of course I did!

Come on Barbie, let's go party!
What to wear, what to wear! First thing you need to do when you enter the land of the Enchantress is to snag some clothes. Fortunately you start with a vest, long johns, socks, and shoes. No nudity in the Barbie Girl world! You get to choose skin color, hair, eyes, and lips on your first screen. You also get your first brutal fact about being a Barbie Girl: it's going to cost ya. Although you can kit yourself out with free items, others require you to part with Barbie Bucks(TM). These you can get by having mommy or daddy provide a credit card number for your Barbie bank account. So I'm not yet clothed and already the pressure is on to spend, spend, spend.

New Pix and modified Pix

My first shopping experience was to visit the Chic Boutique(TM) and browse the shelves for new clothing. Within one minute of entering the store I was hit with two requests for friendship without either person saying a single word to me. I declined both. I'm just not that sort of girl. I need the flowers, the dinner, the wooing, and all that good stuff before I commit to something.

Second Life couturiers need not worry about cross-platform competition because the fashion standards in the Barbie Girl world are a little primitive. But considering that your body looks suspiciously like a hairy balloon on top of a stick, there's not much skin to cover with cloth. So I chose a new dress and went into the changing rooms to try it on. I found you could alter the color and pattern of the item, something not always possible in SL. I tried out a cute little skirt that didn't make me look like a heifer, for the reasonable price of 30 Barbie Bucks(TM). My account had been credited with 100 so I felt it was a worthwhile investment.

Chic Boutique 10 Barbie bucks skirt

But wait... there's more. The "Add to basket" button was grayed out. On screen was a large button exhorting me to click to become a VIP member? It turns out that although I can actually earn Barbie Bucks, I can't spend any until I become a VIP! So here I am with money to burn and no way to use it. Damn. So for $5.99 US, I can be a VIP for one month, for $17.97 I can have a 3-month membership, and $35.94 gets me a 6-month ride. All these exclude taxes. Needless to say I left disappointed without my snappy new frock. If only Barbie had been here; I bet she'd have bought it for me.

Super glam VIP access cranks up the fun - for a price

You also get a room when you join. None of this hunting-for-land and buying houses like you have to do in Second Life. However, it's only a one-room pied-ŕ-terre with a tiny balcony, and as a non-VIP, you can't buy furniture to add to the bed that seems to be the only item you have. Having the bed seems redundant because although you can visit your friends' houses, only VIPs can have people to their house. That means slumber parties and pillow fights are out. It may be some time before Xcite(TM) products are on the shelves at Chic Boutique.

Logging out from my first Barbie Girl experience was as simple as it is with Second Life: I crashed.

Even Barbie has to crash sometimes

All good clean fun, eh? Well, Mattel are banking on the 11 million online users of Barbie Girl to make up for the shortfall in actual Barbie sales. And as Second Life residents often point out, the 11 million will include free users, dead accounts, and even alts. The Second Quarter report says that the net loss in doll sales was $46 million, so let's hope the little Barbettes are doing their bit to boost the virtual economy. Otherwise Barbie's going to be running back to Ken's trailer and joining him working at his truck stop gas station in Arkansas.