Barbie as Sleeping Beauty
Barbie as Sleeping Beauty will please the Barbie contingent even with a few
modifications to the original story. It's sweeter - the bad fairy turns into a butterfly and
her original death wish for Aurora has been changed to 100 years of sleep, leaving the
violet fairy nothing to do but wish her sweet dreams. I wished that the Barbie people would have introduced some of the conflict that occurs in the actual story and even the ballet. Bruno Bettlheim maintains that the dark and even gruesome aspect of fairy tales allow children to give vent to their negative feelings and even little girls are entitled to have some. But enough of this harangue.
The music is nice - melodic and twinkley. The voices are double dipped saccharine.
There is a straight through story mode and
a select the best parts mode. The navigation
scheme of clicking on different parts of the castle is good. There are five activities
interspersed throughout the story: recalling musical patterns introduced for its education
value; designing a dress and crown for her birthday party is fun - and it's what Mattel
does well; battling the evil fairy is easy to do and well scaled for this age group - but the
best is navigating the maze to get Prince Ken into the castle to wake the princess - clever
and a good exercise in recognizing rotated shapes. The age range stated on the box is 4
and up. I would say, not too far up.
Reviewed by Genevieve 12/99
Ages 4 and up