Children all over will soon be able to have a conversation with their Barbies, and all they’ll need is a WiFi connection. Mattell is planning on unveiling this new doll — Hello Barbie, to be precise — by the time the next holiday season rolls around.
This particular Barbie, created through a partnership between Mattel and ToyTalk, will have voice recognition software, and according to TechTimes the doll will “remember the users’ responses and get to know them better over time.” As Mattel told BBC:
The number one request we hear from girls around the world is that they want to have a conversation with Barbie. Now, for the first time ever, Barbie can have a two-way conversation.
Now I’m picturing children all over the world as Joaquin Phoenix in Her, sans the R-rating.
My only experience with entertainment even remotely like this when I was a kid were 1) my sims (and still play), and 2) my Furby. The former I treasure the memory of to this day, the latter I tell horror stories about because I’m pretty sure it was a demon. I’m sure these Barbies will not be demons (let’s hope) — though this whole thing does beg the question of what kind of hacks we’ll be getting out of this.
Didn’t this already happen with Lisa Simpson?
(via Tech Times) (Images via Shutterstock, Gifrific, )
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