There has always been a Barbie backlash; mothers who refused to buy her, women who actively bashed her. Journalist-turned-novelist Anna Quindlen fantasized about driving a “silver lamé stake” through Barbie’s plastic heart; Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Carol Shields said Barbie’s expression, with “its dumb shine of self-absorption, its trippingly tartish look of one who is out for all she can get,” is “eerily disturbing.”

Barbie has been held responsible for eating disorders and charged with offering girls a wholly unrealistic body image. A typical Barbie doll is 11.5 inches,...