Barbie Color Reveal – a failed attempt at ballerina magic?

 

Some thoughts on Color Reveal dolls in general

Personally, as an adult, I was never overly attracted to the line of Color Reveal Barbie dolls. (Yes, spell checker, I know you're set to UK English, but Barbie's from the other side of the Atlantic and that's part of the official name. Leave her “color” be. Ahem.) The idea of having something as big and as (comparatively) expensive as a Barbie doll drawn randomly doesn't really appeal to me. I know it's a trend – but not one I like. I reckoned, unless we really like all the dolls in a given Color Reveal series, better to buy opened ones second hand. Also Color Reveal dolls tend to have a lot of painted and moulded parts, which is the current trend overall, but particularly frequent in Color Reveals. I don't like plastic bodices and legs painted to be tights, because they limit the ways in which the doll can be redressed, and some of them even have moulded plastic hair, which I really, really dislike.

So we bought a few used Color Reveal mermaids, and they were quite pretty, though the fact that their semi-transparent tails couldn't bend for them to sit was annoying, so for the time being, we stopped even that. We did buy two Pop Reveal Barbies, but they have two major advantages over the Color Reveal series. Firstly, they have much better bodies: bendable elbows and even Made to Move legs, and I really like that amount of poseability. Secondly, despite everything being wrapped in bags on the inside, they're not really random: the packaging clearly shows which doll you're buying. And I think that's a lovely middle ground! (Of course, they had to mess it up with the Chelseas in the same line being random, but you can’t have it all. At least they’re cheaper.)

Because, of course, as much as an adult may find it annoying or too expensive to keep buying random reveal toys to get the one(s) they want – with many potential doubles in the process, if you're aiming for a whole collection – many children love that mystery part, and that's precisely what the toy companies are aiming for. My daughter loves opening all the little bits in the Pop Reveal Barbies, or, say, Playmobil EverDreamerz, even though it's not really a mystery what you'll get in there - but it feels like one. Not to mention Magic Mixies and their potion-brewing and special effects! But Mixies, like many brands, do have different codes on the bottoms that you can look up online to see what you're buying (and more obvious ways, like gem or eye colour on the packaging, for the bigger toys), thus letting you have the mystery if you want it, but skip it if you're looking to buy a particular toy. From what I understand, Mattel also used to have that for the Color Reveal Barbies, but then they deliberately removed it: now all packages of a single line have the same codes, and random is the only way to go. Not surprising, though annoying.

 

Here comes the ballerina

And, of course, then comes the part when my daughter really, really wanted us to buy a Color Reveal Barbie from this year's ballerina series in a store. I had previously looked at them and wasn't impressed, but at least they had real hair. (Polypropylene, no doubt, but just add them to the list “they'll be bald before I'm old” and move on.) I showed my daughter what they looked like online, she looked at the pictures and said she liked them all, so we bought one.

Image of all available dolls from youloveit.com

We got the blonde Barbie (with the Millie face) in the pink outfit. On the one hand, that was the most common face, so others may have been better – but on the other, she has the cutest head accessory in my opinion, a French beret. (More on accessories soon.) My daughter likes her, and now her name is Martha and she has joined the ranks of ballerinas in our Barbieville. My own impressions, however, are mixed.

 

Terrible (lack of) poseability

To be honest, I'm a little spoiled lately. More and more dolls come with at least regularly bendable elbows and knees, not to speak of the wonderfully poseable Made to Move bodies (and their equivalents in other brands). So, for me to buy a doll with just the good old shoulder and hip articulation, that doll needs to be special – and these just were not. They were cute, but I could think of so many better ones.

However, what came as a really unpleasant surprise in that respect was the fact that the doll has much less poseability than even the regular Barbie! First of all, she can't sit straight. She can only be reclining. Her back can't be lifted to a 90-degree angle, more like a 40-ish one.

Yes, this is her “sitting”. The best that she can.

Needless to say, then, she can't nearly do a split or lift one leg high up – the best she can do is a sort of broad stride. Her thighs are simply shaped so that they collide with her torso and can't move beyond a certain point.

So, a doll who is supposed to be a ballerina is now the least mobile doll of all the Barbies we own. (Well, not counting the utterly unbendable mermaids and the Barbie Starlight with Pupcorn, who is all in one piece because of the electronics inside.) That’s quite a disappointment.

 

Accessories, ballet and balletcore

By the way, is she really supposed to be a ballerina? The thing that initially left a bad impression on me was that the shoes of dolls in this line have the (plastic) ribbons you would associate with ballet shoes… but also high heels. Looking them up online, I saw that the dolls were “inspired by balletcore”, a relatively young fashion trend of wearing ballerina accessories such as tutus, leg warmers and so on – as a fashion statement. That explains the heels: she's not a ballerina, she just likes dressing up as one because she thinks it looks good. Apparently, I’m not the only person who didn’t get this at once, as there are confused questions regarding the heels on the internet.

Balletcore as such (unrelated to Barbie) has sparked some controversy: while some see it as a harmless trend showing admiration towards ballet, and maybe even beneficial for promoting the aesthetic of classical ballet in everyday life, others see the use of professional ballet accessories by people who aren’t dancers as insulting. But even if we view it in a fully positive light, I can’t help but wonder if it was the best choice for a Color Reveal Barbie. The random draw and reveal mechanics are both primarily aimed at smaller children. The average little girl doesn’t know what balletcore is: she looks at this doll and sees a ballerina. Hmm, okay, she has high heels on her ballet slippers – maybe some modern ballerinas do? That was approximately my daughter’s thinking, and I presume many little girls think that way. When I explained to her the balletcore idea and the heels, and suggested that Martha perhaps could be, well, just a girl dressed that way (because she definitely can’t do any advanced ballet moves), she adamantly refused to make her anything other than a ballerina. So… if little girls like ballerinas, why not give them a proper ballerina? And older girls and adult collectors could possibly be thrilled with a balletcore Barbie – but one done with more details and without the moulded plastic clothes.

But things are as they are. Let’s see what we get in the set. The dolls are all of different skin tones and hair colours, which is nice, and each has matching shades of pink (or, in the case of the pale vaguely Asian girl, light purple) for her outfit and accessories, as well as the coloured strands in her hair. They have plastic moulded leotards with simple straps, that can work as sleeveless shirts for various outfits, and could work as swimsuits, too, were it not for the decision for them to also have painted hard plastic legs to represent tights. Don’t know about you, but I usually don’t wear tights to the beach. ;) While this does tie the colour scheme in nicely with the rest of the outfit, I would have greatly preferred them to have bare legs, if actual, removable fabric tights weren’t an option.

As is frequent with Colour Reveal dolls, the ballerinas also have colour change features on their faces, triggered by heat or cold: removable makeup, including little designs painted under their eyes. (Martha has hearts, others have flowers and maybe butterflies, not sure from the pictures.) To be honest, I’m not too thrilled with their position – they sort of distract attention from the eyes, and I would have preferred, say, a discreet design on the forehead, like some mermaids have. But it’s alright. The eyes may be slightly pixelized, but only very slightly.

Let’s have a look at the removable accessories. The aforementioned shoes have heels and platforms, and criss-cross ribbons supposedly tied with a bow around the middle of the calf. There a small design in the front of the shoe – ours is just a thin little bow, not sure if the others are different. Overall, they are cute, and the ribbon of the bow falling more to one side is a nice detail.

Then, there are the skirts: each doll has a different design on her skirt; two are shaped more like tutus and two like more conventional short skirts. They are also fairly transparent, which would be quite fine for a ballet performance, but if this is supposed to be balletcore, maybe too transparent? I’m not sure most girls would go out into the city in a very short, very thin transparent skirt that doesn’t really cover much. On the other hand, they do somewhat resemble the glittery skirts often sold as costumes for little girls, so I guess they might appeal to them… though those usually have underskirts. :)

The head accessories differ most of all. Two dolls have hairbands (one with a bow and one with roses), one has headphones (or are those ear muffs?), and ours, as stated, has a beret, with a big bow on it. I really like the beret, so I am happy that we got that one. The only issue I have with it is that it slips from the doll’s head very easily when it is put on properly… but when it is put upside down, with the bow on it seemingly defying gravity, it fits much better. Generally, you have to push it forward a bit too much if you want it to stay on.

And the final accessory is…a brush. A cute brush with a plastic bow, but still… that feels sort of lazy. Days when all Barbies came with a brush are long gone and, to be fair, nobody needs a designated brush for every doll. Couldn’t they have had a piece of jewellery? (Not even going to mention removable tights, except that I just did.) In addition to that, the box prominently says that there are six surprises inside, which means either that the colour change mechanic counts as one of the surprises, or that each of the shoes counts as one. With that and the brush, I feel like we were cheated out of two potential accessories.

 

The bottom line

In the end, my impressions are mixed. The dolls are cute, but I dislike the general trend of plastic, moulded parts on Color Reveal (and some other) Barbies, and I think the accessories could have been a bit better. I also would have preferred a proper ballet outfit – I know there are many Barbie ballerinas, but you can never have too many! (We love ballet in the house – my daughter watches performances of the Nutcracker practically as frequently as Disney movies.) And a more carefully done balletcore doll, or a series of them, could have been done better outside the Color Reveal line. And the worst drop for me personally is her terrible inability to sit: I really can’t see an excuse for that.

Then again, my daughter likes her, so… I guess they hit the target for little children? But I still think she would have liked a proper ballerina more. This is somewhere in between: it doesn’t quite hit the target for either the ethereal magic of ballet or cool modern fashion. Maybe it would have been better to separate the two?

In the end, when you add a proper skirt and a jacket onto her, I can really imagine her going out into the city to meet some friends.

I just hope they find her a nice reclining armchair to sit in. :)

The rare opposite sex in children's media and toys

 

It will likely come as no surprise to you that popular children's media and toys are very, very segregated along sex and gender lines. The more something is created out of commercial motivation, and not artistic inspiration, the more prominent the issue. Your average children's novel might aim primarily at a male or female audience, and thus have (mostly or solely) boys or girls as the main heroes, but the rest of the world within it will nevertheless be populated by people of both sexes in a statistically credible mix. However, if you visit the toy store, it will be good if you can find one Ken for every twenty Barbies in there, and you won't find many more (if not fewer) female soldiers and officers among the military-themed action figures.

You can see them. Top right, all in the same black suit. Just as diverse as the girls.

Of course, toy companies do that because they believe this is more likely to sell and bring them profit. Not only do they assume girls will prefer to play with the themes of fashion and home, while boys will favour action and adventure – they also assume that girls will want to dress up only or almost only female dolls, while the boys’ action heroes will be almost exclusively male. Now, personally I disagree with this: I always liked both types of games, and I was always annoyed by the lack of diversity available. Getting a good selection of Kens for my Barbies was always a very difficult mission, and my G.I. Joes had Happy Meal Barbies and Disney princesses of the same scale as both romantic interests and combat allies. I’ve known other children who complained of the same (including my own now), not to mention adult toy collectors. But let’s say those are all exceptions, that the average child does prefer more toys of their own sex (though I think this is dominantly market-induced even when it is the case), and that the companies made correct calculations. As annoying as it may be for me personally, this is the lesser problem.

The greater problem is the media. The main culprits are cartoons, and cartoon shows more than feature films, though there are video games, books and comics (mostly parts of big franchises also focused on selling merchandise) that have the same problems. Again, I am not talking just about who the main characters, the heroes are – but all the characters in the medium overall, primary, secondary and background characters all together.

Take My Little Pony as an example: in the first and second generation, female characters vastly outnumbered the male ones, to the point that most ‘baby’ ponies had known mothers, but not fathers. The third generation, aiming at a target audience of younger girls, did away with boys completely, without a single male pony even being mentioned, let alone showing up. (Even non-pony male characters were extremely scarce in G3: there were only Spike the dragon and, mostly off-screen, Santa Claus.) On the other hand, My Little Pony Tales (the “G1.5” show) and the later G4 and G5 introduced normal amounts of male relatives, friends, colleagues and simply random male ponies in the street. The main cast of both Tales and Friendship is Magic remains all-female: we are undoubtedly following a story about girls (or mares, if you prefer), but they inhabit a world normally populated by ponies of both sexes.

I know, boys. I’m confused, too.

We see similar things on the male side of the aisle. The only action woman in the old Action Man cartoon was Natalie, and the supporting cast wasn’t exactly swimming in women, either. And I’m really regretting not having bought Natalie’s toy back in the day while she was new in stores, because she fetches quite a price on the second-hand market now. How wouldn’t she? She’s the only female toy! The same goes for male G1 ponies, and so on.

On the other hand, the team behind He-Man may have understood that there were plenty of girls who would like some sword and sorcery action as well, but instead of fully integrating the protagonist’s sister into the main storyline (where her role is secondary at best), they gave She-Ra a separate spin-off, which had the same issue (maybe even more so), just reversed: female heroine, female allies, female villain, with an occasional man here and there.

Don’t even get me started on the heels. :)

What’s the problem with such settings? They don’t feel natural. They don’t feel like living worlds – places where, beyond our heroes running to save the world every week, some people (or whatever creatures) live, work, fall in love, raise families and grow old. Whether or not we have issues with a dominantly male or female main cast (some people find it fine, some are militantly in favour of at least relative gender equality in this respect), we can, at the very least, understand that sometimes the story is such that focusing on characters of a single sex makes sense. Perhaps the story is set in the army or in a maternity ward, or in a sex-segregated school. Perhaps it’s not that extreme, but a tightly-knit group of boys or girls is simply in the focus. But if everyone or almost everyone else is of that same sex, it will feel fake. Like a play set in a sex-segregated school, where simply not enough girls were willing to play male parts, and we’re left wondering why almost nobody has a father, brother or boyfriend.

To be fair, modern media is improving in that respect. Mixed-sex casts are getting more frequent, and when the main cast is diverse, the background usually follows. However, offenders still exist. My latest pet peeve are the Enchantimals, where the male Enchantimal characters can be counted on the fingers (it’s slightly better with their besties, i.e. animals – but even those are mostly female), and even most of those were issued as toy-only. You can’t help but gaze at the lovely Enchantimal villages and towns and wonder where have all the good men gone… And that in a universe that has no hostility and no actual villains, just misunderstandings or accidents, so they can’t just all be off fighting in a war somewhere. It almost feels like the producers said “let’s not bother designing a character if we’re not going to sell a toy of them” – returning us to the toy problem – but that can’t be all. Even the existing male toy characters are underused in the show. Could they really believe that girls would watch less if they showed a boy on screen more often than once every leap-year?

Take a good look. You won’t see too much of him!

To circle back to the toy issue, there are examples of the opposite – shows that do feature characters of the opposite sex, even in important roles, but sadly pass them over when it comes to toys and other merchandise. For example, Shimmer and Shine, while it does have some writing problems, does feature male characters on every level of its female-focused cast: we have Zac and Kaz, who are very prominent secondary (borderline primary) characters, interesting episodic male characters (such as the lightning genie Shaya), as well as a number of background characters – e.g. ordinary boys in the playgrounds on Earth, genie vendors in Zahramay Falls etc. But the main toy line reflects the usual stereotypes. While Zac and Kaz do appear among the (fairly simple and cheap) plastic minifigures, the line of larger, dressable dolls that accompanied the show consisted of female characters only. That means that tertiary female genies who only appeared in one or two episodes got dolls - but not Zac, who was there prominently for half the show. Surely, my daughter can't be the only little fan disappointed by this? To be fair, I found her a bootleg plastic Zac. He has many flaws - he's of different proportions, his limbs don't move, all his clothes are moulded and his colours are a bit off - but at least he's roughly of the same height as the female dolls and has Zac's recognisable features. Not a perfect alternative, but it works. Only… if bootleg manufacturers are making one of the 5-6 main characters of your show instead of you… don't you think you're doing something wrong?

Well, Zac would at least know what to say to that: “It happens. It happens a lot!”