The ultimate toy for girls this season will be Hello Barbie, which is already available here, although for a slightly higher price than its manufacturer announced.
Barbie underwent countless transformations over the years — a rock star, a doctor, a teacher — and more recently, she has been interested in science and tech.
The company behind the countless Barbie dolls, Mattel, now is firmly embracing the tech world. Its latest doll, Hello Barbie and her key feature is something we have become accustomed to in recent years: voice-recognition software. In 2015, Barbie comes with Siri-like capabilities that let kids to have actual conversations with Barbie.
But unlike Siri, which can mostly answer questions based on web queries, Hello Barbie can have real back-and-forth dialogue with a child about career goals, interests, favorite ice cream flavors and tell jokes. When it is on, Hello Barbie can have real back-and-forth dialogue with a child about career goals, interests, favorite ice cream flavors.
After Hello Barbie is synced up with a corresponding app and a Wi-Fi connection, she’s ready to be turned on via a small button on her belt. Her necklace blinks and glows green notifying the user that the Wi-Fi connection is strong, and the built-in microphone is set to pick up on conversations.
She comes with her own personalized charging station; there are magnets in her feet so she can stand up in the charging portal, while her back gets plugged in for refueling.
When someone says “Hi, Barbie. How are you?,” the doll “listens,” and that audio is transferred via the cloud. A related piece of dialogue streams back to the doll and Barbie responds, “I’m good. How are you?” There are thousands of lines available in Barbie’s conversational repertoire, so chatting scenarios can play out in many ways.
The company says that over time this new and smarter Barbie will remember a child’s interests and ask follow-up questions. However, the doll will never asks about personal information, like where a child lives or even their name, for security and privacy reasons.
When a parent goes through the process of setting up Hello Barbie via the app, it’s possible to control the settings and manually approve or delete potential conversation topics. For example, if a child doesn’t celebrate certain holidays like Christmas, a parent can chose to remove certain lines from Barbie’s repertoire.
This is the first time Barbie can talk for hours about many subjects and perhaps the first time, when she can meaningfully play back with a child, while encouraging imaginative playtime at the same time.
Since the doll is connected to the cloud, she can be updated with new lines of dialogue at any time, too. This means if there’s a new Taylor Swift song on the radio that everyone is talking about, Hello Barbie will be ready to talk about it.
But overall, the company’s latest effort is a smart use of modern-day resources to show how powerful tech can be during playtime.
