Sorry for posting twice in one day, but I am a little frustrated with Mattel and I had to vent a little. I received an email about the $1 shipping sale from Mattel. I decided to take a look. No harm in looking, right. I ran across a new "I Can Be" doll that is due out in August. I was pretty excited to see her because she is an architect with a hard hat, a miniature house, and a few other accessories. I am very happy to see that Mattel is showing women in more non-traditional professions. Yeah, Mattel.
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So why am I frustrated you ask? Because how can you be anything if you can't move! Why aren't all of the "I Can Be..." dolls on articulated bodies? The computer engineer has articulated arms and the Ballroom dancer is fully articulated. From what I can tell, the rest are not articulated. I know the Pizza Chef can twirl a pizza, but she is not articulated. This architect doll should be able to sit down at a table and look at diagrams with movable arms. It's just all common sense to me. It's not like Mattel doesn't have a whole line of articulated dolls now. Where is the disconnect?
Typical Mattel, one step forward and 5 steps back. It's so frustrating because it means more money to buy an articulate body. Mattel drives me nuts. My frustration with them and this playline is, why can't they add at least ONE more face mold to the collection? All AA dolls have the Desiree mold and that makes no sense to me. :( Oh well, I guess the accessories are the perk.
ReplyDeleteTracy - Right on about that desiree mold! I'm really sick of seeing it. Why do they think that all little girls and big girls want the same doll over and over.
ReplyDeleteI agree! I think we need to start a letter writing campaign or something. Obviously dolls like the Barbie Basics are not geared towards little girls. They are for us. They MUST have people out there checking out the doll collector blogs. Frustrating!
ReplyDeleteDani - I tried to go to Twitter and comment directly to Mattel, but no luck. A lot of companies let you have access to them directly. Back when Stacy McBride-Irby was there, I sent her a direct twitter message about the new non-articulated S.I.S. dolls. Three weeks later she left the company. I wonder if she was getting a lot of feedback that Mattel wasn't interested in hearing?
ReplyDeleteHear here! Yes.
ReplyDelete1. Tired of the Desiree face mold already.
2. Wish Mattel would give ALL the current dolls at least bendable elbows. Please!
3. Mattel had problems with the SiS line beyond the articulation aspect. They had promised NEW face molds for that series, then used the Mbili face mold for ALL dolls. They said the SiS dolls were their first attempt to make "real ethnic" dolls. (Not true, go back to the Shani line when Mattel was really committed to black ethnic diversity.) So Stacy McBride-Irby probably heard a lot of negative feedback that Mattel deserved. Sigh. Not her fault, of course, since she could not force Mattel to do her bidding.
Aside - and to be fair to Mattel, the economy has been awful. Hmmmm that I need to ponder.
D7ana - The bad economy didn't stop Mattel from spending MILLIONS on the MGA lawsuit. Can you imagine how far along they would be if they sought out advice from the people buying the dolls, and put millions into making the product better. Hmmmmm.
ReplyDelete