Creativity Tools
Barbie Fashion Designer
Better – but still flawed – is the Barbie Fashion Designer. This one, at least, shows some originality, and little girls find it simply heavenly. Choose a “theme,” like Dream Date, Trendy, Wedding, etc. The program presents you with a 2D cut-out of Barbie, and lets you choose tops, bottoms, and accessories. Add some patterns, pick some colors, then watch a 3D virtual Barbie model the outfit on a runway. The disc also comes with cloth that fits in your printer; print out the dress, dab some artificial sequins on it, and outfit your old-fashioned plastic Barbie doll. We like the fact that girls now get to create their own clothes for Barbie. Fashion Designer may be a cut above the rest of the Barbie merchandise – but it’s still a long way from being a good CD-ROM. The selection of outfits is much more limited than you might imagine, and the program boasts some astounding technical oversights (we made an outfit that was lacking a top; for some reason the computer kept telling us to pay more attention to the shoes, which were just fine, thank you very much). The disc also takes an awfully long time to concoct the virtual Barbie for the fashion show – children may lose patience when they’re forced to hesitate for two minutes in the middle of the creative process.
- December 1996
