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Comment by wishfish | Hacker News Reader

I was amused by this from the article:

> As it was probably thought that secret writing would not appeal to girls, the coding/decoding facilities were omitted from the manual.

Whoever made that decision at Mattel was probably male and didn't have daughters or nieces. Just like boys, girls love ways of keeping secrets. I'm remembering the coded notes of my childhood that girls would pass between themselves and boys like me had no hope of deciphering them. Thinking about how my nieces were very happy to learn about things like invisible ink and simple ciphers. One of my niece's favorite gifts was when I bought her a diary with a locking case.

Mattel missed something here. The secret cipher could have been a big selling point for their target audience.

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> The secret cipher could have been a big selling point for their target audience.

The target audience of a toy is parents, not children.

Some parents might reject the toy due to that feature, which is bad for sales if the children want it regardless of the feature being mentioned.

If the feature were widely known, it would probably result in a lot of the units being put into the cipher state. You couldn't have a display unit at a Toys 'R' Us, without visitors constantly putting it into that state, causing subsequent visitors to think it is broken.

Yeah, maybe it's because I grew up with sisters, but "girls not wanting to do secret writing" (if the actual reason) is boneheaded beyond belief. "Keeping secrets in a hidden diary" is literally a standard trope in sitcoms.

To be fair to Mattel, we don't know their motivation in leaving it out -- that's speculation by the author of the web page.

Although knowing their history (google "Barbie math is tough") we probably shouldn't extend them too much benefit of the doubt!

>Mattel missed something here. The secret cipher could have been a big selling point for their target audience.

While I agree a spy keyboard would appeal to all children, tacking the Barbie brand on it feels strange.

Imagine a box saying "Barbie Keyboard; Now with 4 unique cyphers!" The two have nothing to do with each other, unless there is a Barbie spy line I'm unaware of... searching...

Yep there is a "Barbie Spy Squad" movie released 2016. Of course.

Barbie and typewriters already have nothing to do with each other.

Sure they do. How do you expect Barbie to hold down so many jobs without her trusty typewriter to write up her résumés?

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