This was news to me, as I am way out of the demographic, but apparently the Barbie brand is so moribund these days that some are calling for it, and therefore her, to up and die. That sounds a bit rash, particularly because it is still the top-selling doll brand. Also there's this: Just as she's hung on eerily to her unreal-world figure for decades, you kind of know that if she were killed off, she'd soon come back from the dead when some new regime at Mattel decided it was a stupid idea to get rid of her in the first place. According to a video with this story from The Today Show, girls think Barbie has gotten really dull—apparently, being able to bend her knees forward as well as backward doesn't hold the allure for today's kids that it did when I was a girl. And then there's another problem: After about the age of 7, girls would rather play computer games, narrowing the window in which they can fall in love with a doll that has blue eye shadow and really big boobs. No wonder Mattel is planning a makeover.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor