Mattel, NASA Team Up To Make Barbie Space Ready

Mattel is celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Curiosity Rover’s landing on Mars by teaming up with NASA to create the Mars Explorer Barbie doll.

In a press release posted by Mattel, the company stated the following:

“Ready to add her signature pink splash to the “red planet,” Barbie® doll is outfitted in a stylish space suit with pink reflective accents, helmet, space pack and signature pink space boots.”

The press release continued on to say:

“The 2013 “Career of the Year,” Mars Explorer Barbie® doll enters the stratosphere just in time to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Mars Rover Curiosity landing on August 6, 2013.

“Adding to her resume of more than 130 careers, Mars Explorer Barbie® doll inspires girls to be adventurous and to always reach for the stars!”

This isn’t Barbie’s first time to space.The Huffington Post stated that the first Barbie astronaut, “Barbie Miss Astronaut,” was released in 1965, two years after the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the world’s first woman to fly into space.

Time reported that the new doll “isn’t perfect” stating that her suit is “suspiciously form-fitting, and it oddly fails to protect Barbie’s hands against the elements of Mars.”

Other negative reactions including a piece by Juses Diaz on Gizmodo entitled: Why The Hell Did Mattel Make NASA’s Astronaut Barbie Pink?”

“If there are no astronaut suits with pink elements, why make them pink? ‘Because girls like pink’ is probably their weak non-argument.”

Not all reactions have been negative, as the Huffington Post reports.

“For some readers, a few pink accents to grab the attention of little girls appears worth it, especially since the packaging includes information about several women space explorers and was a collaborative effort with NASA itself.”

This isn’t the first toy that NASA has worked with Mattel to create. Huffington Post reported the that prior to the Hot Wheels Curiosity set, Mattel actually worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, from where Curiosity is controlled, to release a series of five Hot Wheels Action Packs between 1997 and 1999.

The toys included models of Mars rovers, Apollo spacecraft, planetary probes and the space shuttle.

What do you think of the new mars Explorer Barbie?

[photo credit: RosieTulips via photopin cc]