New Girl-Power Dolls Come With Their Own Experiment Kits
"Project MC²" is geared for tween girls.
— -- Girls shopping for back-to-school items at stores like Walmart and Target will now also be able to throw into their cart fashion dolls created specifically to empower them.
Each of the four dolls in the “Project MC²" line from MGA Entertainment comes with its own experiment kit focused on S.T.E.A.M. (science, technology, engineering, art and math), the toymaker announced today.
The dolls are also designed specifically to represent “real girls.” Each doll is engineered to stand at a different height and is made with “premium hair, glass eyes and rooted eye lashes to help deliver a natural and realistic aesthetic,” the company said in a statement.
The website for “Project MC²,” which features the tagline, “smart is the new cool,” shows the dolls’ experiment kits range from lava light and volcano cake experiments to creating blueprint skateboards and glow stick necklaces.
The “Project MC²” line – ranging in price from $9.99 to $54.99 – is available starting today at Walmart, Target, Toys R Us, Amazon, Kmart and Joann Fabrics and Crafts.
MGA's own CEO, Isaac Larian, is a civil engineer by trade who says he remembers there being only one female in his classes as a young engineering student.
"She was frankly the smartest one in our whole class," Larian told ABC News. "The taboo that females cannot be engineers, mathematicians or businesswoman, has to be dealt with. That was my inspiration."
The creation and production of the dolls took nearly three years and included the hiring of a team of scientists to make the dolls as authentic and accessible as possible.
"Once we had the idea, we wanted to make sure it was real and not phony," Larian said. "We wanted the dolls to have experiments where girls could use household materials to create the scientific experiments and, hopefully, inspire them to take classes later."
The launch of Project Mc² also includes a Netflix original series that is premiering globally today. The series stars Danica McKellar, of “The Wonder Years” and “Dancing With the Stars” fame, as the leader of a spy organization led by “the world’s smartest female operatives,” according to MGA.
The series geared to tweens, or 10- to 12-year-olds, is a smart fit for McKellar, who took a break from acting to earn her mathematics degree from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and then went on to write books like “Math Doesn’t Suck” and “Kiss My Math” targeted at girls.
McKellar took to Twitter today to promote the new series.
Check out the preview trailer for my series @projectmc2 on @netflix, released today! http://t.co/Bt689faYry #girlpower #STEM #fashion
— Danica McKellar (@danicamckellar) August 7, 2015
Check out the preview trailer for my series @projectmc2 on @netflix, released today! http://t.co/Bt689faYry #girlpower #STEM #fashion