Mattel has made a brilliant move in reaching the tech savvy female youth of today. Barbie Girls are adorable and highly functional MP3 players that you can dress up. The kit comes with a few different clip-on outfits that make it a fashionable accessory.

A whole world of possibilities opens up when you log on to BarbieGirls.com with your new Barbie Girl plugged in. Here the girls can custom design their online character down to the eye color, with an advertised 2.64 quadrillion possible combinations. Then they can design their room, where they invite other registered Barbie Girls over. They can use earned “B Bucks” to shop and go to the mall, cinemas, park, boutique, café, and even adopt pets that have a real life plastic counterpart for purchase. This accessory pack that contains the pet, also has little decorative pieces for the headphone wires. How clever! Maybe even a fad in the making.

As a parent the very valid concern may arise about the danger of your children making online friends and chatting. The word filter feature called “B chat” may put your mind at ease. It filters out any personal information or obscene language from being exchanged. “Secret B Chat” is an option for users to only invite into their room those who have physically connected their Barbie Girls to one another, thus excluding strangers entirely.

The MP3 player itself is fairly user friendly, but depending on how adept your child is at computers, you may have to help them a lot with set up. Barbie Girls can hold up to 120 songs or about eight hours of music. If that’s not enough, and your darling must have all of her Brittany, Christina, and Justin, a 2GB card is available for separate purchase. The sound quality is not up to the iPod standards but it does the job. Battery life lasts 10 hours on a charge and is compatible with Windows XP and Vista but not Mac OS. Overall, I liked the Barbie Girls Mp3 player a lot and secretly I will wish I could carry this on the train without getting funny looks. Enjoy it while you can kids!