The doll is quite popular.One bakery sells half-a-dozen Barbie cakes a week! But like Barbies everywhere, she is controversial because of skin tone and the fact that not every kid can afford her.
The Barbie movie is being celebrated (and slammed) as a feminist film, with its themes of female empowerment and critiques of the patriarchy. Can the same be said for the doll at the center of it?
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, about their 1989 hit "Closer to Fine" being featured prominently in the new Barbie movie.
Based on one of America's most emblematic pieces of intellectual property, Greta Gerwig's Barbie was never going to be just a movie, because Barbie was never just a doll.
It's not every day that an exuberant comedy about a Mattel doll goes head-to-head with a brooding drama about the father of the atomic bomb, but critic Justin Chang says both films deliver.
Warner Bros. and Mattel set out to create a movie marketing machine — including more than 100 brand collabs and viral social media campaigns — to build excitement for the film's July 21 release.
The company has been moving to diversify its doll collection. It has so far made other Barbie and Ken dolls with wheelchairs, vitiligo, hearing aids, and prosthetic limbs.
Businesswoman Madam C.J. Walker is the latest to join Barbie's line of Inspiring Women dolls. Walker's great-great-granddaughter said she hopes the doll will show kids they too can be entrepreneurs.
