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They've both got 'yellow dog' definition wrong! ------- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The Queen is dead For decades there has been only one doll that little girls have wanted - golden- haired, long-legged Barbie. So how did a three-year-old upstart with drugged-up eyes and an oversized head knock her off the top spot in the UK? Tanya Gold meets the Bratz Tanya Gold Wednesday October 06 2004 The Guardian Toytown is tottering. For 20 years Barbie Millicent Roberts, Mattel's serene Wasp from Willows, Wisconsin, has been queen of the global doll world. Two Barbies are sold each second and, if you placed all the Barbies and family bought since 1959 head to toe, they would circle planet Earth seven times. Whatever her incarnation - princess, palaeontologist, presidential candidate, paramedic - Barbie ruled. But an interloper has stepped in to imperil Barbie's $3.6bn annual turnover and the welfare of her 48 pets. The upstart's name is Bratz, and she is three years old. In 2003, Bratz generated $2.5bn in global revenue and last month secured 45.1% of the British fashion-doll market, making it the No1 bestseller. Barbie has fallen off her plastic throne. Dolls are both imago and icon for little women; they tell us what we fear, desire and, also, what we might become. And on the third floor of Hamleys in central London lies this magic looking-glass - the doll zone. I have a sudden pang for the beloved Sindy doll of my childhood and yearn for her friendly smile and her long vinyl limbs. Sindy lived in a Bishops Avenue mansion in my bedroom. She was haute bourgeoisie; she rode, she swam, she dated a man who looked like George Hamilton, and she owned a caravan. She lived the affluent life I grew up to covet and, before I chopped her head off, I adored her. But, in the doll death-match, Barbie saw off Sindy long ago. Barbie World stretches out before me. It is a pink purgatory, starring row upon row of Barbie's most beloved self - forever "princess". It's a Royal Wedding with just one guest, guarded by a Hamleys employee wearing jeans, a T- shirt and a pink princess hat. Princess Barbie is 12.5in high and smiles out of her packaging. If she were human, she would be 6ft 2in and weigh seven stone. Barbie was inspired by a German sex-kitten doll called Lilli. Lilli was sold to men only at tobacconists in Germany in the 1950s. But this geisha incarnation is long forgotten. Today Barbie is wearing a glittery pink gown and sitting in a peach carriage, drawn by peach horses. She clutches a dead-eyed swan. Ken stands behind her carriage, watching Barbie. He looks like Robert Kilroy-Silk in golden boots. I find just-married Barbie, a Vivien-Leigh-in-Gone-With-The-Wind Barbie, and even a sinister Fulham tableau starring a mumsy Barbie, a grey-haired Ken posing as an actuary, and a baby. Then come the branded tie-ins to help little girls learn to desire other corporations - a small army of Disney Barbies, Coca- Cola Barbie, Ferrari Barbie, even a Vera Wang Barbie. These more modern dolls are dissemblers: Barbie cannot hide her true nature. She is an icon of postwar American affluence and confidence. Barbie has many careers, but, if you look at her face, you know she doesn't need them. She oozes a sugary, pre-sexual revolution status quo. There is no crimson lipstick, no thigh-high boots, and certainly no fuck-me-Ken shoes. She is a smaller, less talkative Nancy Reagan. But Barbie World is deserted. Boxes of Barbie-branded bits (spoons, karaoke machines, skipping ropes, tissues, a Christmas tree) are piled up unsold. An Afro-Caribbean Ken has been reduced to $4.99. I cross the plastic aisle, the Valley of the Dolls, and enter Bratz World, six feet and a social revolution away. Bratz isn't smiling out of her complex packaging, which indicates she is for the bedsides of seven to 12-year-olds. She pouts violently and with unspoken malice. Bratz is 11.5in high (one inch shorter than Barbie) and voluptuous. Were she human, she would stand 5ft 6in tall. She has an oversized head, thigh-length hair and slanting, opiate-drugged eyes. These are dolls that Martin Amis would recognise. Her lips are huge, painted and parted. You can take Cloe, Dana, Jade, Sasha, Yasmin, Fianna, Neura or Meygan home. These dolls are red-, brown- or indigo- haired; just one blonde glares out. Bratz are "multi-ethnic". There is a black Bratz, an Asian Bratz, and a Eurasian Bratz. Standing beside them are their lovers: Cade, Dylan, Eitan, Camero and Koby. I see no change in male dolls yet; these dolls are square- jawed and stereotypically handsome, just like the repulsive Ken; they are Harrison Ford before he went to seed. One has a Justin Timberlake Afro, another wears skis, and their expression, faced with a torrent of plastic promise from Meygan and friends, is bewildered. They wear Gap and Benetton-esque clothes. Ken's golf-club chic is gone. There is no dream castle in Bratz World, no dull and honourable marriage to Ken. These are a gang of groovy, careless singles. They party in the Bratz sushi lounge, the internet cafe and the Big Brother hot tub. They own mobile phones, plasma screens and an entire Harvey Nichols-ful of call-girl ruffs and feathers, thigh-high leopard boots, black leather miniskirts and pink silk camisoles. Bratz drink espresso and smoothies. This corner of Hamleys is a mini episode of Footballers' Wives, a plastic representation of a party at Beckingham Palace. These are dolls for children who watch television, read Heat, surf the internet and worship Britney Spears. I take a poll of small consumers and grinning parents. Why do they like these pouting dolls? They consider. Anisha, aged six, says, "Bratz are pretty and they're fashionable." Abby, seven, likes "to dress them up and do their hair", while Jessica, four, thinks "they look lovely. Shoes," she adds. "Hair." Alice, also seven, thinks, "Bratz look kind". Would they buy a Barbie? "Too babyish!" they cry. "Barbie is for little girls." How old are the Bratz? They all describe then as "teenagers" except Anisha, who thinks one particularly predatory-looking Bratz "is about 12". The Bratz were created by Isaac Larian, an Iranian Jew described in the toy industry as "a charismatic entrepreneur". Larian came to America to become a structural engineer in 1971 but instead he founded MGA, now the biggest privately owned toy company in the world. In 2000, the designer Carter Bryant walked into his California office with a drawing of a Bratz doll. Larian's seven-year-old daughter Yasmin (now immortalised as a doll) liked the drawing. Larian commissioned a prototype and the cold wind began to blow through Princess Barbie's realm. Why does Larian believe he has sold 80 million Bratz? First, he cites the Death of the Blonde. "Bratz are not all blonde and busty like Barbie," he says. "I decided to make Bratz multicultural. A Mexican child thinks her Bratz is Mexican, a Brazilian child thinks her Bratz is Brazilian. The multiculturalism is their magic." The second ingredient in this Willy Wonka world is the Bratz clothing. Most Barbie clothing is - and looks - cheap. Larian employs professional designers to ape the clothing children see on the Sugababes when they switch on the ubiquitous television. "We go to fashion shows every year to identify trends and we change the clothes the dolls wear three or four times a year, just like in the full-sized fashion industry," says Larian, who produces his dolls in Southern China, where careful attention is paid to makeup. "Each doll goes through 16 rotations - that is workers - just to paint the eyes." When a child is aged between four and six, he argues, "it wants to be like its mummy. Barbie is mummy. But as they get older they want to be older and develop different role models. Children always want to become old." Esther Jones, curator at the Museum of Childhood in east London, agrees. "Little girls always want what they can't have and don't have. These Bratz are into music and fashion and boys; for the girls who buy them, these are almost unobtainable - and yet almost there. To see Bratz as provocative is an adult interpretation. To the children, they just look attitude-y. It's a yearning for womanhood and for maturity." The UK licence to sell Bratz is held by Nick Austin of Vivid Imaginations. He talks affably and gleefully in the weird marketese that business people love about Barbie's fall. "Barbie is struggling to stay relevant with older girls," he says. "She is looking like an old, tired brand. The big-shoulder, power- dressing Barbie of California is out; the big hair, the unfeasible figure. It's anathema to today's nine-year-old." Austin argues that it's significant that the Bratz come with a wider range of accessories per doll. "With Barbie you have to buy a lot separately. Ours is the more honest approach to retailing. We deliver everything in one purchase and we are following the brand consciousness of young people. We are mirroring the wider society's obsession with brands." Barbie is still the No1 brand leader globally - but she does seem to be going through a mid-life crisis. Recently Barbie dumped Ken, her 12-inch consort of 43 years, and began dating an Australian surfer called Blaine. Not that her people are sweating in public. Sarah Allen, public relations manager for Mattel UK, describes the fashion-doll industry as "an evolving feast, through which trends and new fashions move". She insists that the My Scene dolls, which appeared in 2002 and resemble Bratz very closely (except with slightly less filthy eyes), were not a response to the challenge from Bratz. "We were working on them for some time," promises Allen. But never write off a prom queen from Wisconsin. At the moment she may be a wallflower, but Barbie is an American icon, a blonde tank wrapped, like the astronauts in Tom Wolfe's novel The Right Stuff, "in God and flag and hearth and home". She emerged smiling from the Totally Hair Barbie experience, when she was given a toe-length wig. She has survived an incarnation as Judy Garland, another as Cher and a spell in the US airforce. Summit Barbie partied through the end of the cold war; I know she will see the 22nd century through those cold, blue eyes. But for now the lipsticked juggernaut of Bratz rolls on, high-kicking in its combats and delivering irony, attitude and sex for the seven-year-old. There are 36 Bratz licences in the UK - for magazines, posters, perfume, sweets, hats, tissues, underwear, jewellery, games, socks and stickers - and an animated Bratz movie entered the shops last last month. In 2005, comes a TV series; in 2006, a live action movie. "We want to take Bratz out of the toy aisle and into lifestyle," says Lisa Shapiro, who is in charge of licensing. "We want the girls to live the Bratz life - wear the mascara; use the hair product; send the greeting card. The toy business is shrinking. Kids are getting older younger and we're losing them to clothing, computers and DVDs. If Barbie is about fantasy, then Bratz is about real life. It has to be." Parents be warned: Bratz are about to swallow your kids. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited |
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