As iPods, Nintendo Wii systems, and MySpace profiles continue to grab more and more interest from today’s children, toy manufacturers are being forced to re-invent their dolls, racing cars, and stuffed toys in order to hold onto their market in the 21st century. Here’s a look at how four toy brands, including Barbie, are trying to do just that.

BarbieGirls.com

Dolls - $75

PC Only

It is Barbie’s most dramatic transformation yet. Girls need no longer choose between their iPods and their dollies as Barbie and her friends have gone hi-tech and are now three products in one.

Barbie the Doll – Although she no longer has moveable limbs, you can still change her clothes, shoes, hairstyle, and even her expression, all through a variety of clip-on plastic parts. True to her formula, Mattel has also launched a line of accessory packs including different fashion styles and accessories.

Barbie the MP3 Player – Turn her over and you’ll find iPod-like playback controls and a headphone jack in the top of her head. She offers 500MB of flash memory and can synchronize with your PC’s music library through Windows Media Player. To keep the rechargeable battery from dying too quickly, the player is designed to shut off whenever the headphones are disconnected.

Barbie The Social Profile Protector – Pull a switch on her back and a USB connection pops out of her feet. By connecting her to your computer through a special white dock (included), she becomes a passport into the online social community BarbieGirls.com. Girls who join that community are free to befriend anyone they meet online in a public way, but to add a girl into their private friends list for full access, they have to have that girl come over for a visit in real life (under parental supervision) and plug in her own Barbie doll in order to make the connection.

BarbieGirls.com the online community is currently open to anyone, with or without a doll, for free. The twist is that it is only those who have a doll that get access to pets, fancier clothes, shoes, hats, purses, furniture, and private friends lists.

Activities – Girls can create a profile including a virtual doll customized in looks and fashion to their taste. They can also outfit their own apartment with furniture and décor. They can adopt a pet and buy it treats and toys. They can control their dolls like video game characters and send them out into a virtual town to visit shops where they can shop for new clothes, buy food, explore, play simple video games and watch trailers for Barbie movies.

Socializing – One of the main drives behind BarbieGirls.com is the collection of other users on a friends list. This turns out to be extremely easy, just a simple walk through the café, park, or cinema will attract dozens of friend requests as girls can send out requests by simply clicking on any character they see. In the same way they can also exchange public text messages that are displayed as if their own dolls are speaking out loud, making it easy for girls to role-play and speak freely with each other.

Friends – Once two girls become friends, they can exchange private e-mails, send each other gifts and even invite each other over their apartments for little visits. Inside the apartments, girls can sit on the furniture and “B-Chat”, play with the resident pet, and even swap clothes.

B Dollars – The other drive behind the community is a currency called “B-Dollars” which you need in order to buy virtual clothing, furniture, and treats. Buying a doll or accessory pack is one way to get a supply of money, the other is by playing games or more suspiciously by watching commercial trailers for other Barbie products. If you want to impress others and make friends, you’ll need to get yourself some money.

Privacy – Because the profile is managed completely by the doll and its own serial number, BarbieGirls.com doesn’t need to collect any personal information from its users and so doesn’t have any to give to marketers, hackers, or the world. Although girls are pretty free to chat with other strange girls, there is a filter that quickly replaces inappropriate words and complicated phrases (it’s not punctuation friendly) with abstract symbols (wingdings). Chat messages are limited in length too as are private e-mail messages.

Parents have access to some basic privacy settings (you can set it so that only private friends can enter virtual apartments) and blocking controls are available for eliminating determined bullies.

What it’s like to play right now – Since its launch, the online community has attracted over 4 million users, the majority of whom do not own a doll. If you own a doll and log on, you’ll instantly become swarmed with friend requests as you have exclusive access to purses, hats, and the fancier clothes. Fortunately you can retreat to your apartment for some solace. It’s early yet, and one of the drawbacks right now is the lack of activities. The few games available wear thin fairly quickly, but when you do find friends, being able to follow each other around, going through shops, visiting each other’s homes can be very rewarding.

Be-Bratz.com

Dolls - $50PC Only(French Language version launching in October)

The Bratz dolls have taken a different approach. This new line of 10” dolls remain as traditional, posable, dress able dolls but packaged with a special USB key on a chain, a mousepad, and a glitter-decorated computer mouse.

As with Barbie, the USB key is a passport into an online community. The difference is that only girls who own the doll, and so the USB key, can join. Plug the key into your computer and the Be-Brazt.com website will automatically open and open your account.

Activities – Girls can create their own Profile page (MyPage) where they can list marginal details about themselves that they both volunteer (favorite ice cream, hair colour, snack, etc.) and generate through a personality quiz (outgoing, thoughtful, etc.). Its these details, along with user name, virtual doll name, and virtual pet name, that girls can search for in order to find other girls to add to their friends lists (MyPals).

Girls get their own virtual doll to customize, give makeovers, and outfit with clothes and accessories bought at virtual shoppes. They can play games, both by themselves and with online friends, and can decorate a 3D apartment.

Although there is a virtual town, girls explore this town and its shops alone. The idea is that their virtual doll is their friend as she can speak back, carry very limited conversations, and has needs (hunger, love, etc.) that have to be taken care of.

Socializing – This is done mainly by performing a keyword search through the network, viewing each other’s profiles and listed interests, and then exchanging e-mail messages with each other to co-ordinate playing games and showing each other their fashions. Girls can also design and send e-cards to each other.

Bratz Money – To buy clothes and accessories, you need money and just like Barbie, getting more money comes from either buying accessory packs or by playing online games. Fortunately, although the site just launched this past Aug. 1st, there’s plenty of games to keep you busy and earning cash.

Privacy – Parental Controls offers a wide range of settings. For girls under 13 years old they need to have their parents approve every new friend by e-mail. Similarly text messaging as a feature has to be approved by parents and there’s a full selection of blocking controls to remove bothersome bullies. The website also uses a language filter for “bad’ and inappropriate words.

What it’s like to play – The games and activities are fantastic, but the virtual town and its shops are just 2D webpages with no way for friends to visit together or see each other trying on different clothes (not without buying them) and that can make for a lonely time.

SwypeOut

Scanner Kit - $20

PC Only

Not to leave the boys out (they certainly use FaceBook as adults) Spin Masters has combined two toys – racing cars and collectable trading cards – into an online racing game and community.

The starter kit includes a USB Card Scanner (a toy version of the credit card scanners used in stores) and an initial selection of trading cards that represent three elements; racing cars, car parts (spoilers, engines, tires, etc.), and novelty weapons.

Once connected to a computer, users can register for a virtual garage and then scan in each card (the cards have bar codes on them) to build an inventory cars and upgrades.

Activities – Boys can build their own custom racing cars and then submit them to an online racing game where they compete against each other to reach a finish line. Just before the race begins, they have to quickly scan their novelty weapons cards (pigeon poop motors, alien invasion attacks, and sitnk bombs) that they can then fire at each other during the race to get an advantage. SwypeOut maintains an online leaderboard system where boys can see their finish times ranked against others.

Socializing – Before and after a race, boys can exchange quick chat messages and invite each other to join their friends lists so they can keep track of their progress and arrange private races. As a social activity, it’s fairly limited and focused just on finding partners to race with.

Privacy – SwypeOut offers a closed text network, which means there’s no typing. Instead boys have to choose their text messages from a list of pre-written scripts organized into groups labeled as “Greetings”, “Compliments”, “Racing”, “Questions”, and “Answers”. Boys can’t even create their own screen names, having to choose from a list of randomly generated names instead. Friends lists have simple controls for blocking/removing annoying bullies.

What It’s Like To Play – Fun, but more as a racing game than as an online community. The game is easy to control (arrow keys on the keyboard) and the use of bard codes cards to add goofy weapons gives it just enough originality to make it a different experience from other racing games. As the SwypeOut game expands and more trading cards are released in more accessory packs, expect to see kids leave their keyboards for a moment to trade cards with each other in the real world.

Webkinz.com

Animals approx. $20 each.

Long before Barbie and the other Bratz became hip to social networking, stuffed toys from Ganz had it all figured out through a line of critters called “WebKinz”. These stuffed toys include dogs and cats, frogs and monkeys, and they all come with a special code imprinted on their tags.

Owners are encouraged to visit the online community of WebKinz.com where by typing in that secret code, they unlock a virtual pet version of their stuffed toy to play with, clothe, feed, and even manage a virtual apartment for. All for free.

Activities – The virtual pet becomes your social profile, representing you as you engage others in online games, quizzes, item collecting challenges, and exchange messages in a special series of chat rooms devoted to specialty interests such as sports, reading, or collecting. You can buy clothes and food for your pet, furniture for your apartment, and register for special contests and activities that only become available at certain hours of the day or specific days of the week.

Socializing – For the most part, Webkinz is about you and your pet, you and your activities, then it is about you and other users. You can play games with others in the community or trade some simple text messages in the chat room.

WebKinz dollars – In order to buy clothes and accessories, you need virtual dollars and you can get these by buying more WebKinz toys, collectable trading card packs, charms and bracelets or by playing games and winning in special contests. Fortunately there’s a lot of the latter.

Privacy – Webkinz offers extensive parental controls that allow you to block specific features from being accessed by your kids. There are two types of chat, a basic version where kids are limited to only trading a selection of phrases from a pre-written script, and a Plus version where they can enter their own text, but are limited to a small dictionary of words (words not allowed are blocked).

What It’s Like To Play – WebKinz has been around since 2005 and so is deep with activities, games, and clever features. I’ve yet to get a chance to try out half of them. Many of the games are ideal for playing with a friend (the Link’d room offers a ConnectFour-like game and they have a great version of BattleShip).

The pets are expressive and fun to use as guide through this online world. As a fairly inexpensive option with the most developed online world, this is the easiest offering to recommend.

What’s New – In addition to introducing a new selection of animals, including a raccoon, clysdale horse, and grey husky, Ganz is also launching a new line of charms and bracelets that can be worn by both owner and stuffed pet. The jewelry comes with its own secret code that can be added to a Webkinz account in order to unlock access a new section of the Webkinz community called Charm World that offers a new range of activities and games.