Barbie has gone through a lot of changes going from Stewardess to Astronaut. I’m not sure what career this new incarnation would be suited for, but you can now “design” hair extensions for your doll and have them printed out on inkjet printers using a special “hair” paper.
The printer can print images, words, colors, textures, and a variety of other aesthetic stylings based on what is designed .
and boom your semi-classy Barbie now looks trashier! An you can wear them yourself if you are so inclined.
The product seems tacky, but it is neat to see the profusion of customization and how it is working into all sorts of odd niches.
More importantly, I wonder if this says something about customization more generally. Maybe custom isn’t something that can carry a company on its own (except maybe in some edge cases), but it is something that is added to a mature product line. Customization is cool, but perhaps not cool enough to sustain an enterprise independently?
