Barbie has been many things over the years, from doctor to rock star, but in her lasted incarnation, she's a working mp3 player and a key to a virtual online world.

The Player

The Barbie Girls MP3 player offers 3 modes of use: Fashion Play, Online Play, and Music Play. The next section will cover the online play.

The player itself resembles, when face-down, a kazoo in size and shape. On the front, you can snap on a doll-shaped faceplate, then accessorize the doll with various snap-on hairstyles and other fashions. It also includes a belt clip that attaches to a cord coming out the top.

The player has no screen, so if you're familiar with devices like the iPod Shuffle, this is a rough equivalent, although without the easy iTunes sync. The player syncs with your Windows PC via Windows Media Player. (Note: Windows Media Player is not as easy to sync as iTunes. Dependence on WMP is a serious drawback of this device.) You can connect it to your computer directly through an open USB port or use the included docking station. The player can play MP3 or unprotected WMA files.

Mac users: you are not locked out here. I mounted the Barbie Girls player via USB no problem on my iBook. It shows up as a removable hard drive, and you can drag files from iTunes (or a Finder window) to the player in the Finder to copy them. It's not as easy as syncing in Windows Media Player (if you can call that "easy"), but it's workable, even though the instructions say, "NOT MAC O/S COMPATIBLE" (emphasis theirs). Just make sure you don't delete the 2 device files on the drive.

Device Specs

The device has 512MB of space but only holds 480MB of music (about 8 hours or music, depending on encoding), the rest used for the system. That said, it has a slot for a miniSD card, allowing for an additional 2GB of expansion. The built-in battery lasts "up to 10 hours" and can be recharged while connected to a USB port. It includes a pair of white earbuds, but for safety reasons, you may want to consider a different pair, since earbuds make monitoring volume levels difficult, and white earbuds have been known to attract iPod thieves in some urban areas.

If you have a boy or otherwise not-into-Barbies child, this is possibly the cheapest MP3 player on the market, especially if you watch the clearance aisle at your local Wal-mart for older models. We've seen them there for $15.

Fashion Packs

Available separately, various Fashion Packs offer additional outfits for your Barbie Girl, and included codes for the Online Play give 100 B Bucks and an online gift like dresses or a special pet.Some sets include beads to decorate your earbud cord or "earbud earrings," a unique accessory that connects to the earbuds to gives the appearance of earrings. Fashion Packs follow themes like pets, sports, or "Glam Gowns."

BarbieGirls.com

First, note that you don't need to buy a Barbie Girls device to use BarbieGirls.com, but your options there are very limited without it. Still, it's worth trying out before you buy the device to see if it's what you're looking for. Note also that buying the device only gives 1 year of free access, not unlimited.

When creating your account, you must enter the parents' email address. A message is sent to that address to approve the online activity/registration, requiring the parent to click a link to give permission. We ran into a couple problems with this system. First, the message won't open in Apple's Mail, thanks to some strange HTML incompatibility. If you're an Apple Mail user, send the message to a Yahoo or GMail account instead, where it will work just fine. Also note that your child will see the password you choose, so don't use a personal one. We got an error when trying to change it to something else. When the permission message comes, read the message carefully, as it offers 2 links, 1 to allow "Secret B Chat" and one to prohibit "Secret B Chat." See below for an explanation.

When logging in, you must choose which world to enter, Star or Flower. Both are identical, but friends online in one will not be visible while in the other. This seems to be a way to keep the worlds from getting too crowded.

Sound varies considerably in this game, so make sure you know where your volume controls are on your keyboard.

We were able to play the game no problem in Safari on a Macintosh, but we registered with a Vista PC. The instructions say the Barbie Girl must be connected to the computer when registering, which we did, but we found that this was not necessary during gameplay (and didn't test for registration), so one sister can listen to music and dance around the room while the other explores the virtual world. (And yes, that's exactly what happened.)

Avatar

Your online avatar (the girl you control in the game) has a great variety of options available for customization, from eye shape to clothing, with extra options available if you've registered a Barbie Girl.

Room

Your character then gets a limited supply of "Furni" (furniture--we're not sure why the odd name) to decorate her room. The landscape from the balcony can be altered at will, going from an urban scene to a beach scene, night to day. Furni is somewhat interactive. The character can sit in chairs but not lay on her bed. My daughter (age 10) initially had trouble moving the furni due to what seemed to be a bug, but the problem seemed to correct itself.

 

Pet

If you've registered Barbie Girl, you can purchase a pet from the pet store, but you can only own one pet at a time, and only one pet accessory (water dish, bone, etc.) can be in your room at a time. Your pet is essentially a piece of Furni, as you can't play with it except to make it jump a bit--no "fetch" or anything like that, and you can't take it for walks.

 

World

By clicking the globe, you step into the Barbie Girls world, or neighborhood, as the case may be. This area resembles a downtown shopping district filled with stores offering clothing and accessories from formal dresses to casual wear, a pet store, salon, and movie theater.

 

Stylin' Salon

My 10-year-old's favorite part of the Barbie Girls world is the Stylin' Salon. Here, girls take turns giving each other makeovers. Integrating chat would be a nice touch here, but it's fun nonetheless.

Movies

At the Movie Theater, girls can watch flash videos of commercials for Barbie products and the direct-to-DVD Barbie movies. The child earns B Bucks for watching these. Some parents may be concerned about pumping ads into their daughters' brains, but I'm the type who likes to get to a movie early to watch the previews or go to Apple.com's movie trailer site, so this doesn't bother me.

Games

The Barbie Girls world also offers three games that play much like the makeover at the Stylin' Salon: Dazzling Nails, Mix a Music Video (choose the elements to be used--nothing fancy), and Give Ken a Hot New Look (choose clothes, etc. for Ken). Each time the child plays a game, she gets 10 B Bucks. The games are fairly simple, though, to the point of losing their replay value. Hopefully Mattel will change these games once in a while.

 

Friends/Chat

Chat works one of two ways. Your child's Barbie can enter a public area and just start talking using "B Chat." B Chat gives the child dozens of phrases to say via a word bubble. This limitation prevents any personal information from being shared, but my 10-year-old fond the options to still be too limiting to be of much value to her.

Girls can add each other as friends, which allows them to take friends to their rooms to show the room off and chat there.

In addition to friends, girls can have "Best Friends," who should only be people they know in real life. With these and parents' permission (via email), they can "Secret B Chat," which allows an actual chat via typing. This, of course, encourages girls to get their friends to buy Barbie Girls devices (required for Secret B Chat) so they can chat this way. For added security, when initiating a secret B Chat, which can only be done in one of the girls' rooms, all non-Best Friends will immediately be removed from the room to prevent eavesdropping.