MINNEAPOLIS -- One of the few items on the Christmas list of Emily Noreen's 4-year-old daughter is a doll she can call her own.
"I want her to have something preferably that looks like her, which is hard because their father is African-American, and I'm white," Noreen said.
So she was heartened to find more than one option in the Our Generation line, a less-expensive alternative to American Girl, while perusing the toy aisles of Target. After some deliberation, she picked out a doll named Nahla, whose skin is a bit darker than her daughter's but whose curly hair was pretty close to her daughter's.
Richard Barry, chief merchandising officer for Toys R Us, said the changes in the toy aisles are happening as toymakers and retailers finally listen to customers' demands for more diversity.
"We hear from customers," he said. "We get applauded on the things we have, but they are also very keen to tell us the things we don't or the things they would like us to have. We feed that back to our manufacturing partners."
The need for more multicultural options was one of the insights Toys R Us took to heart when developing its private-label line of dolls called Journey Girls. Launched in 2010 with four dolls, it has expanded to seven dolls of all shades.
While a spokesman said the blond-haired, blue-eyed doll is the most popular, Barry said the racially diverse offerings across many brands have been selling well, giving manufacturers more confidence to do even more. You can see it, he said, in the success of Hasbro's Baby Alive dolls.
"A key driver of the success of that brand this year has been diversity and ethnicities," he said. "Hasbro has always had the blue-eyed, blond-haired Baby Alive doll. In adding other ethnicities, they've seen demand for that line significantly increase. It's definitely working."
Toys R Us also recently started carrying American Girl's Truly Me collection in select stores -- which includes dozens of dolls of all shades, eye colors and hairstyles, including one without hair and that come with accessories such as crutches, diabetes kits and wheelchairs.
American Girl added another black character to its lineup of historical dolls this summer, a girl who grows up in civil rights-era Detroit.
Earlier this year, Wal-Mart also expanded the range of skin colors and hairstyles in its My Life As and My Sweet Love doll collections. It even added an 18-inch boy doll, a first for a mass retailer, said spokesman Danit Marquardt.
There also are two new Disney princesses this year, joining Elsa and Ariel. Products featuring Elena of Avalor, which is Hispanic, and Moana, a Polynesian heroine, are a common site on shelves this holiday.
Barbie, who set an unrealistic standard of beauty for generations of little girls, received a makeover this year. Mattel, which had seen sales of its flagship brand faltering for years, hoped to make Barbie more relevant with a new Fashionistas line with dolls that come in seven different skin tones, 22 eye colors and 24 hairstyles. She was also finally given more realistic body proportions and comes in three sizes -- curvy, petite and tall. The changes have helped Barbie get her groove back with sales rising this year.
Anthonia Akitunde, editor-in-chief of Mater Mea, a website focused on minority-group women, remembers her excitement when American Girl introduced Addy Walker in the 1990s, the brand's first black character. Even though she couldn't afford one, it was still a special moment for her, she says.
"I was excited to see someone with brown skin," she said. "She had a gap [in her teeth], and I had a gap. There was something comforting in seeing a doll who on the surface level looks like me."
These days, she sees her Facebook news feed light up whenever there are new launches of other racially diverse dolls. She recalled the buzz, for example, about Naturally Perfect Dolls, which are primarily sold online and celebrate kinky and curly hair as an alternative to black dolls with straight hair.
Still, she hears about fights in the toy aisles when daughters want a white doll while the mothers insist on getting a black doll.
"If all she's seeing is Elsa and this long braid, it's hard to counter that messaging," Akitunde said.
Stacey McBride-Irby has begun to see a cultural shift. She grew up playing with white Barbies, which inspired her to go to work at Mattel. She worked there for 15 years, designing a line of So In Style Barbies in 2009 with four different skin tones and fuller noses and lips compared with the previous black Barbies that were basically identical to the white versions.
She left Mattel several years ago to start her own diverse line called Prettie Girls! dolls, which come in South Asian, East Asian, Hispanic, African, black and white characters. Wal-Mart has started carrying the line. In fact, she said, a representative from the nation's largest retailer approached her about it at a toy fair.
"Consumers have been voicing their opinion, and fortunately the retailers and manufacturers are finally listening," she said. "And consumers are finally purchasing the dolls they're crying out for."
It's a reflection, too, that the notion of beauty is much broader today, a message that is hitting home as more diverse models and actresses become more common.
"It's not just a mom telling a little girl that black is beautiful, but they can see it on the TV or in a magazine," she said.
Or in a doll.
SundayMonday Business on 12/25/2016