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Crunch-time came when columnist Dan Savage published an article for gay-oriented newspaper The Stranger, which said that ‘Earring Magic Ken’ included too many signifiers of gay culture for it to be coincidental. ‘Remember the sudden appearance of African-American Barbie-style dolls after the full impact of the civil rights movement began to be felt?’ Savage asked his readers. ‘Queer Ken is the high-water mark of, depending on your point of view, either queer infiltration into popular culture or the thoughtless appropriation of queer culture by heterosexuals.’

Savage went even further, slamming Mattel’s statement that Ken was representative of the relatives of the little girls who took part in the research: ‘What the little girls were seeing, and telling Mattel was cool, wasn’t what their relations were wearing – unless they had hip-queer relatives – but the homoerotic fashions and imagery they were seeing on MTV, what they saw Madonna’s dancers wearing in her concerts and films and, as it happens, what gay rights activists were wearing to demos and raves,’ he wrote.

Following this article, and the interest it caused, Mattel discontinued the Ken dolls and recalled as many as they could from the shelves. Ken’s brush with controversy was now over and Barbie could sleep easier knowing her boyfriend was still interested in her.

Lesson from Earring Magic Ken

Research children’s markets carefully. Mattel asked five-year-olds how they wanted Ken to look. And they told them. But that didn’t mean parents were going to buy the new-look Ken dolls when they finally emerged.

10 The Hot Wheels computer

Stereotyping the market

In September 2008 Sony Ericsson launched a ‘girls exclusive’ handset version of the Walkman phone. Preloaded with music tracker by the Sugababes and Pussycat Dolls, the product did not dominate the market segment it was aimed at. Sony’s marketing department could have saved themselves some pain if they had studied Patriot’s problems of a decade earlier.

A computer aimed specifically at children may seem like a good idea. Patriot Computers certainly thought so, which is why they came up with the Hot Wheels PC in 1999. These computers, which came with Intel chips and Windows 98 software, were targeted primarily at the boys’ market and the hardware was decorated with racing car imagery including the Hot Wheels flame logo. In addition, Patriot Computers had made a deal with Mattel to produce a Barbie computer aimed at girls. The boys’ computer was blue, the girls’ was pink with a flowery pattern.

Both products flopped. One of the reasons, according to analysts, was the crude attempt at gender marketing. Pamela Haag, director of research at the American Association of University Women’s Educational Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal that this type of marketing was ‘very out of step with what adult men and women are doing, and therefore with what children want – it really is anachronistic’.

Justine Cassel, professor at the MIT Media Lab and co-author of From Barbie to Mortal Kombat, also thought the computers were crudely conceived. ‘Just because you cover a traditionally boy product with girlish clichés doesn’t guarantee girls will like it,’ she said.

The computers were also criticized as bad cases of surface design trying to save a standard product. ‘It was just a desktop computer with some stickers on it,’ wrote Business 2.0. Shortly afterwards the products flopped. Patriot Computers went bankrupt.

Lessons from the Hot Wheels computer

Don’t resort to stereotypes. Dressing up a computer with stereotypical gender specific imagery was not enough to entice children or their parents.

Get designers involved at the start. ‘To avoid such costly flameouts, designers should be involved with projects from the outset, giving engineers input on product usability and interface issues,’ advised Business 2.0.

11 Corfam

The leather substitute

Founded in 1802, DuPont’s mission is to ‘put science to work by creating sustainable solutions essential to a better, safer, healthier life for