HMD Global has partnered with Mattel create a Barbie Flip Phone. A phone that will have little “smartness” but will be foldable, pink and destined to help the Barbies of the world disconnect from social media and the internet.

The American toy company wants to expand on the impressive marketing achieved by the movie ‘Barbie’, at the time the highest grosser of 2023. Mattel has established numerous partnerships with all types of products and services, from Xbox to Airbnb, and the one that takes will be different.

What will the Barbie Flip Phone be like?

“Barbie could already make her own phone, but we left it to HMD.”, explains Isabel Ferrer, Mattel’s marketing director for the EMEA region, when announcing the terminal at MWC. If you were expecting a next-generation smartphone, forget it. It will be a ‘dumb’ phone as it will be designed for ‘digital disconnection’.

But it won’t be a toy. Its design will be a typical folding, probably clamshell type, in the brand’s characteristic bright pink color. It will be a functional phone in terms of communication, “which will satisfy your basic connectivity needs so you can call all the other Barbies, Ken or even Allan”.

The management of HMD claims that they intend to solve the problem of e-waste (more than 5 billion phones are idle). “That won’t be the case with the Barbie Flip Phone: it will last a long time.”, they assure. Many phone companies, he added, still push people to upgrade their phones every year, which encourages consumerism. In contrast, the Nokia devices that HMD is known for are durable and hard to break. “The same standards will apply to the Barbie phone.”.

From the group that took over Nokia, they understood that nothing said that the Barbie phone was only for women. “It’s for any type of Barbie fan. The phone will pay homage to the “cool style” that Barbie has displayed over the years, with Mattel and HMD’s design teams working together to make it the best possible product for people who love Barbie..

Total: “Offering style, nostalgia and a much-needed digital detox, this retro phone will change the script of smartphone culture and be this summer’s hottest accessory.”says HMD’s head of marketing. The phone will be available from July. We’re guessing HMD’s marketing bosses are hoping the Barbie 2 movie hits the big screen by then to help with sales.