She is portrayed as an inept programmer who inadvertently plagues her friend’s computer with a virus and can’t fix a bug without help from a man. The book implies that Barbie can only contribute to the design of the game she’s working on, rather than its more complicated technical structure.
According to one Amazon reviewer: “Barbie starts out at breakfast stating that she’s designing a game but when questioned by her sister Skipper, she admits, ‘I’m only creating the design idea, I’ll need Steven and Brian’s help to turn it into a real game.’ Literally six sentences into the story, and already Barbie can NOT do it. She immediately admits she doesn’t know how to actually do computer engineering, and like a Disney princess, needs a white knight to rescue her.”
Naturally, the book has not been well received. The majority of parents reviewing it on Amazon have deemed it worthy of only one star, and the site’s sole three-star review suggests renaming the title “I Can Manipulate Boys Into Programming While I Sit Back and Take Credit.”
Note: Mattel has withdrawn this book title from sale.