Kmart launches multicultural doll brands

A growing minority population, and the success of such bilingual children's characters, like Dora The Explorer, have Toy companies looking at more multicultural toys then ever.

Yahoo reports that toy retailers are filling the shelves with a rainbow of colored faces and features to better reflect the kids that will be playing with them. For years there have been black and Hispanic dolls, mostly just using the same white parts and tinting them. These days they are putting the work in and trying harder to get the features accurate. Kmart is hoping to cash in on this new trend by launching their own initiative this month. In each of their 1,400 stores they will be putting dozens of these multicultural dolls on the shelves. Kmart claims that it is the first mass-market retailer to have such a wide variety in all of their stores. Others have been doing it, but these are mostly in minority neighborhoods. Apparently Kmart realizes that minorities are not confined to certain areas of the map. When the plan is completed next week they will have almost four dozen types of ethnic dolls.(that increases what is currently available by a factor of 4) An advertising campaign will coincide and they are hoping to appeal to Hispanic, black and Asian parents.

By 2050, minorities will account for half of U.S. residents, according to Census Bureau projections.

Kmart executives hope the doll campaign will bring renewed foot traffic to their stores, which saw sales revenue fall 2.3 percent last year. Last month, Sears warned that second-quarter earnings will likely fall well below expectations because of more disappointing sales at Kmart and its sister Sears stores.

It is not known how much they have sank into this doll project, but some of the brands are Baby Abuelita and Mattel's Rebelde dolls, also the newly designed proprietary Just Girlz collection. One thing is for sure, they face an uphill battle going up against such giants as Toys R Us, who have a large selection of inventory.

"I think they're going down a very tough road," said toy analyst Jim Silver, editor of Toy Wishes magazine. "Why would I buy a generic ethnic doll over this major brand that has all these accessories?"

What makes a doll a hit? The popular thinking is that it is a blend of name recognition and cool accessories. Will people want a generic doll when they can go to Toys R Us and get a name brand? They asked Marie Jones, whose daughters got a chance to check out the new dolls inside a Kmart store in Chicago last week.

"If they're pretty, they're pretty," said Jones after watching Jade Lynch, 8, and Imani Simmons, 6, play with the new dolls. "They picked up the black ones, they picked up the white ones. They look at the things that they come with. If they can comb their hair, that's the doll they want."

It seems like the time is right. After several attempts at multicultural dolls have failed in the past, demand seems to be heating up. Only time, money, little girls and how well they respond to the dolls will tell.