After nearly half a century of vamping up store shelves with her buxom chest and wasp waist, Barbie, the world's favorite doll, is slowly but inescapably going out of style.
The golden locks are still lustrous, the accessories uncountable and the wardrobe crammed, but the grim reality is a seemingly irreversible drop in sales to depths unplumbed even by Scuba Barbie.
Downturns
Following downturns in 2003 and 2004, sales of the jewel in the toymaker Mattel's crown fell a further 13 percent last year.
"We expected 2005 to be a challenging year and it was, as we continued to experience sales decline in the Barbie brand," Mattel chairman Bob Eckert said at the end of January.
Reversing the company's fortunes this year would require "turning the tide" on the famous doll's fortunes, Eckert said.
Fueling Barbie's mid-life crisis is the success of the pouting, street-savvy newcomers to the global dollhouse -- the Bratz line of dolls introduced by MGA Entertainment in 2001.
Promoted with the slogan "the only girls with a passion for fashion," Bratz have morphed into a retail juggernaut that has roared off with a sizeable chunk of Barbie's market share.
With their pouty lips, big heads, urban street clothes and names like Rock Angelz, Sisterz and Play Sportz, the new dolls are hot items for pre-teens who favour the belly-shirt fashion styles championed by the likes of pop princess Britney Spears.
Hal Diamond, an analyst at rating giant Standard and Poor's, said Barbie had been "permanently weakened" by the sustained competition from the Bratz line, which has also spawned a television series and a magazine.
"Today's children are very, very sophisticated," MGA chief executive Isaac Larian said in an interview.
"They see, they demand detail, design innovation. We have been able to provide that to them, and, as a result, they have rewarded us with their pocketbooks," Larian said.
The seriousness of the problem for Mattel is founded on the fact that Barbie, which once enjoyed 90 percent of the world doll market, accounts for a full 20 percent of the company's total sales.
Bratz
Sean McGowan, a toy industry specialist at brokerage Harris Nesbitt, estimated that Bratz had managed to grab between 30 and 35 percent of the market in little more than four years.
"Bratz look younger, more trendy and little girls can think `I don't have what my older sister has,'" McGowan said.
Larian has no doubt that Bratz will end up stealing Barbie's crown and his predictions have taken on the trash-talking swagger of a boxer before a big fight.
"It is time for Barbie to retire," Larian told the New York Times. "I mean, even Michael Jordan retired."
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