She’s 50 and she is still courting controversy. Barbie has outdone her headline grabbing skills, forget the one tattoo on a Barbie, the pregnant Barbie doll friend and flat chested teen Barbie. Now we have a proper full on tattoo artist Barbie.
Blonde Totally Stylin’ Barbie and her brunette pal Nikki come with 40 tattoo stickers plus temporary “tattoos” for their little owners. The idea seems to be that girls can make Barbie (and themselves…) look like their heroines — such as Jordan, Amy Winehouse or Cheryl Cole.
As you can imagine, parents have gone ape at the prospect and local papers are screaming headlines such as ”A CHAV Barbie with TATTOOS has gone on sale to mark the doll’s 50th birthday”. One parent was quoted as saying “Whatever will they bring out next? Drug addict Barbie? Alcoholic Barbie?” and another said, “It is dumbing right down — Barbie should be at the high end of fashion not the chav end”. Though why that is, exactly, no one seemed to be able to say. The sense of panic and fear apparent in some of the ‘against’ quotes from all over the world are quite disconcerting, really.
The Barbie comes with a set of tattoo stickers that can be placed anywhere on her body and a tattoo gun that allows children to stamp temporary tattoos on the doll’s clothes and on themselves.
“I think it’s attracting kids too young that want to expose parts of body to show off tattoos,” said one parent while others have said they find the doll relatively harmless. “Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Each generation is different. Elvis was evil at one time,” was one dad’s opinion.
In the meantime, Barbie and her tattoos are flying off the shelves in China and Mattel said there are no plans to discontinue production of the toy.
