so we're doing this one while I edit photos for my next actually recent release review hah.
I bought Games Designer Barbie middle of last year, as a geek gal myself I kinda HAD to support coder Barbie right? And I already have Computer Engineer Barbie (her binary shirt is awesome)
Anyway, this isn't a long review so let's dive right on in without any preamble
How nice that Mattel are now giving us variety in our lines outside the Fashionistas. Previously the "I can be" career line has been generic blonde barbie in a variety of costumes and outfits, so it's refreshing to get a brunette one.
The back of the box proudly claims "GAME DEVELOPERS are CREATIVE and understand TECHNOLOGY, MATH, STORYTELLING & ART."
I'm not sure about this. I've known a lot of coders, generally you hire an artist to do the arty bit and a writer to do the story bit if you have a story, and a lot of games have literally zero story so uh..
okay Mattel, whatevs.
The doll comes in one of those blister pack style boxes where you have to tear the whole front off. Which ruins the backdrop.
Booo hissss.
I mean, come on, this background is COOL. There's a computer, being used as in impromptude table for her takeaway and coffee (why would you put it on your tower and not the desktop above it?), a bin full of crumped up paper, or napkins... or maybe they're takeaway menus.. who knows.
There's a couple of screens and a chair with a cushion for lubar support (lol)
a flow chart with nothing written on it (helpful), some flowers and postin notes, a game controller, a joystick (old school) some books (Barbie is apparently a coding language now) and some TOYS!
This was my favourite bit of the background but sadly the one that got ruined worst by deboxing. Barbie and HeMan were decapitated ahhh!!!!
And there's a Monster High Frankie vinyl too!
That's cute.
Barbie's computer background seems to be here and a band.
And by the looks she's working on some sort of Bejeweled knockoff.
Stay creative Babs.
Game Designer Barbie comes on a static body with one moulded curved arm and one straight and unbendable legs. This is problematic as you'll see later.
Her hair is brown with bright red over the top, it looks cool.
It's soft and I think Kanekellon like most Barbie hair is these days.
She wears a pair of large headphones with a mic attached, as well as brown glasses.
Her outfit is a little disappointing. Previous waves of the "I can be" career line have had quite high quality outfits, albeit with a lot of extraneous pink. It's nice to see very little pink here, but Barbie's "jeans" are actually very thin cotton pants and her jacket isn't even lined and is made from similar super thin cotton that creases like hell.
Hmmm.
Her tee is a little grey knit tank with "ctr, alt, barbie" on the front. I think that's cute, but I wish the keys were clearer printed. I had to really squint to see what they were meant to be, they honestly just look like pink rectangles unless you look super close. I think it's the pattern of the knit fabric that makes them so hard to read.
Her hair is awesomely red though. I dig that fire engine red.
It's cut a little sloppily with uneven ends but it's okay. Seems to be rooted alright too.
No big bald patches, yay.
Barbie has very neutral makeup, perhaps the most neutral i've ever seen. She has nude lips and very subtle brown eyeshadow, that's it. Guess Mattel took the criticism of overly made up glamourous spangly tights wearing Computer Engineer Barbie to heart.
I dunno, I kinda like makeup on dolls and should we be insisting that you can't be into geeky stuff AND girly at the same time?
Not so sure about that. I kinda like glamorizing the coding industry heh.
Anyway,
Barbie's glasses are big and chunky and hide a lot of her face, but it's clear this isn't the standard Barbie face mould.
I think it's the same one they've been using for a few of the fashionistas, with these really deep dimples. She reminds me of Teresa a bit but that might be the dark hair.
Either way, i'm not totally sure about this face.
But where this sculpt falls down for me is the mouth region. There's just something... weird to me about those dimples and the way her mouth is shaped with these flared nostrils and I can't pinpoint what it is, but I don't find it very attractive.
The nude lips aren't helping much. poor girl, maybe a more flattering colour? A bright red to match her hair?
Would that be too glam?
Certainly she's friendly looking, I just don't think she's very pretty.
But that's probably just me.
Her skin tone, while it looks dark, is actually the regular Barbie "tan" tone her blonde dolls are. Pairing it with dark hair just makes it look darker I think. I've noticed this a lot, how surprised I always am but how BROWN Barbie dolls actually are.
Her jacket.... is a nightmare to get off because of that stupid bent arm.
I've talked about this before with bent arm fashionistas, and I repeat it, bent arms make redressing and undressing dolls NEEDLESSLY DIFFICULT omg Mattel stop it.
This is a fashion doll for children, she should be able to be redressed without an adult assisting and struggling.
It also doesn't help that the jacket is so flimsy and all the seams are exposed on the inside that I don't think it'll really last being put on and pulled off more than a couple of times before stuff begins to unravel.
I like the IDEA of the jacket, but damn it's a badly made thing.
Here's her whole outfit except her glasses, which I couldn't be bothered trying to unstaple from her head.
The fake jeans, despite being made of some pretty thin fabric, feel fairly structurally sound and are easy to get on and off thanks to Barbie's nice straight hard plastic legs. The only difficulty was getting them over her flat feet, they have quite a tight ankle on them so it was a little fiddly.
The knit tee is well made and fully hemmed but has no elastic closure, it stretches to get it on and off the doll which again, is really quite awkward, made more awkward by that bent arm. Wth Mattel?
Her headphones need to be elastic banded to her head to really stay on, they're a bit big and heavy otherwise.
The jacket has printed on buttons, seams and pockets. Printed on SEAMS? that's a new low Mattel.
at least the bottom of the jacket itself was hemmed, as is the collar and sleeves. I just really wish it was at least partially lined, all that exposed white looks really cheap and bad.
Barbie's shoes are the most dull pair of white trainers/sneakers i've ever seen. I mean, these are so boring I think I fell asleep just looking at them.
Yeesh.
they're easy to get on and off though.
Barbie has weird shaped feet. They aren't totally flat, but they aren't heeled either. Her toes are held up in this really quite awkward position. What the heck?
These sticking up toes catch on the pants when you're trying to get them off.
This doll clearly was not supposed to be undressed... ever.
What's the point of that Mattel?
She's got a standard modern Barbie body. This is the same body the fashionistas all use. Nothing interesting to see here.
Aside from her headphones and glasses, Barbie also comes with a laptop and a tablet. Ooo spoiled.
The tablet has a sticker of her game on it, while the laptop has a string of code and a preview of the game. I don't know if that's legit code, I can remember literally NOTHING about coding despite having a degree in computer animation. Oops?
I like that she got a silver laptop, computer engineer's laptop was garishly pink and it was a bit... limiting. I like that Mattel seem to have started to get over their pink fetish and are starting to give us Barbie accessories in other, more realistic colours.
The laptop actually closes and latches shut, though the hinge feels a bit flimsy. On the back there's a few stickers. a barcode that says Barbie, some hearts and a robot.
that robot is cute.
the back of her tablet just has a hand holding thingie.
it slots onto her hand like a ring.
Which looks... uncomfortable.
A whole hand slot would have probably been more stable, mine keeps dropping her tablet because it slides off her finger too easy.
And there's no way she can hold her laptop... at all... ever.
Maybe under her bent arm like this? But it looks a bit awkward and it slides out and falls on the ground with even the lightest breathing on her.
Poor girl simply doesn't have the articulation to do her job. Her arms can bend around at the shoulder so she can hold her arms UP and out like this.
Or this bizarre pose.
But that's really about it.
She also can't sit properly. Her legs bend sure, but she slouches back a bit with her legs fully bent as her hip sockets stop the leg moving any further, and her legs have no knee joint.
Arms... not.. long enough.. to reach... keyboard...
Her legs are now holding UP the desk, now there's a new desk excercise for you. aaaand lift...
Maybe if I sit side on? Nope... can't rotate... still can't reach... keyboard.
Yes! I can type!
with my face.
Poor Game Designer Barbie. She really doesn't seem to have been designed with play in mind at all.
She can't type, she can't even sit at a desk! She can't even look DOWN at her tablet and has to hold it at arm's length.
In summary?
Well, I still like her because I think her hair is cool and the IDEA is nice. But she's really not well executed at all. If you were going to do a computer related barbie, having her unable to sit and unable to reach a keyboard seems a major oversight. Just giving her jointed knees would have helped, then she could SIT at a desk.
Her outfit is pretty iffy. I like the concept of it, but the jacket is unforgivably cheaply put together and her fake jeans bug the hell out of me too. And her shoes are SOOOO BLAND omg I fell asleep again because I looked at them.
Come on guys, just some fun colour on the shoes? a little half lining so the jacket looked finished?
I like her tablet and her laptop, it's nice to have those in realistic colours and not garish pink as we usually do. So yay!
And they don't really have "Barbie" emblazoned too obviously on them either, which is nice. It means they're useful for other dolls too.
I'm glad to see a career Barbie that's not pink, not sparkly, is wearing clothing that's at least somewhat realistic, has accessories that are realistic and isn't blonde!
It's nice to see diversity in the lines outside Fashionistas and I appreciate that.
I just really wish a tiny bit more effort had been put into this girl's design. She needed knee joints SO SO freaking badly and it's pretty obvious Mattel intended you to never play with her like a child, so why is she marketed to kids? She's very hard to dress, she can't wear any other shoes because of her strange shaped feet and she can't even be posed to look like she's doing the very job she supposedly is portraying!
FAIL.
She's more successful in her portrayal of coder than Computer Engineer Barbie was perhaps, but she's a doll I would as a kid have found extremely frustrating to play with.
I thought dressing the dolls up was part of the whole POINT of a barbie, and when that's no longer something a kid can do on their own, then in my opinion you have failed at your basic purpose.
I give Game Designer Barbie 5 out of reach keyboards out of 10. Her accessories gained her points and her funky hair and cool nerdy glasses. She lost a bunch for unfinished feeling clothing, hard to dress, ugly boring horrible shoes and being unable to actually USE her accessories properly.
I kinda want a ctr alt barbie shirt for myself... only not in grey knit, grey knit is ugly.
Mattel, make cute baby tees!
She looks ready for the kind of play my 7-year-old niece gives her dolls, which is "flying" them around from place to place while they engage in conversation. They also get left out on the patio and get rained on.
ReplyDeleteLol, flying around. Super games designer awaaay!
Deletelove it.