Barbie: Princess Charm School DVD
My 4-year old is a big fan of Barbie too, living her own future fantasies and dreams through her dolls, including being a princess.
The latest Barbie direct to DVD movie was just released, Barbie: Princess Charm School ($19.99), perfect for back to school. The premise isn't new: Barbie lives an ordinary life only to discover she's actually a princess. I'll admit I've had fantasies about that scenario myself. Who hasn't? It's why people play the lottery right?
Barbie gets a chance to attend Princess Charm School, which I’m sure you can guess by the name is a school to teach soon-to-be princesses how to act and behave. My daughter loved the idea of going to school to learn to be a princess. You don’t seem much of the learning in school, the story focuses more on the mysterious death of the last royal family and the missing baby princess, which I’m sure you can guess is someone, you know (hint: her name starts with a B). Along with princesses, Princess Charm School has bad guys (or girls in this case, an evil teacher with a daughter she is grooming to take over the throne) and secrets. There was also a little bit of romance with a soon-to-be Prince and Barbie but it was only for a small segment and the romance was actually more of a friendship boy/girl crush which is just fine when you have a 4-year old watching.
The video quality is the same as previous movies and all three of my kids enjoyed the film, watching it two times in one day.
View the trailer to the Barbie: Princess Charm School DVD:
Barbie: Princess Charm School the App
If you’re looking to extend your Barbie Princess Charm School experience beyond the movie, Random House has also released the Barbie: Princess Charm School app ($4.99) for the iPad and iPhone. The app is a slightly animated version of the Golden Books story. The main premise of the movie is intact but your eagle eye child will undoubted noticed a few discrepancies. You can choose to interact with the story or just have it play through automatically. My 4-year old choose the interact mode which meant she controlled the story. She flipped the pages, replayed the audio, jumped to screens she wanted to see and tapped on words to hear them again. In the interactive mode there is also the option to answer questions about the story to be rewarded with prizes, virtual stickers your child can use to create her own picture. The questions were a combination of seek and find as well as seeing your child’s understanding of the story. My daughter loved colleting all her stickers. Each time to restart the story you can answer the same questions as part of the game but once you have the stickers the rewards are mainly audio.
The feature I like is the ability to record your own audio. So if grandma’s in town for a visit, she can record the story by reading the text on the page and save it. Next time your child listens to it, say after grandma’s gone back home, she can still hear her voice reading the story to her. And you can change the narration as many times as you like. Although we did enjoy playing with the app, especially after watching the movie, I did find the $4.99 a little pricey compared to other interactive apps out there. Perhaps that’s the Barbie price tag.
To get a better idea of what to expect in the app, you can view the trailer from Random House:
Barbie: Princess Charm School Toys
Of course no Barbie movie would be complete without Barbie toys. From the princess dolls and sprits to the pink horse drawn carriage, kids will be able to recreate their own Princess Charm School mystery. My girls have so many Barbies and Barbie-wanna-be dolls yet still they can always come up with a reason why they need more. The nice thing about the Princess Blare doll ($29.99) is that her dress is part of her, as in it can’t come off. Her dress transforms from her school uniform into her princess dress by a button at the back. I like the idea of the transformation but I can see the switch at the back breaking easily. It was already acting a little temperamental after a few days of play at our house but perhaps the kids were being too rough in turning it.
I love the Barbie Princess Charm School Royal Bed and Bath Play Set ($49.99). The set features the dorm room that magically transforms into a spa bathtub and princess tea set. We haven’t actually played with this set so I’m not sure if Barbie fits in all the pieces (like the tub or bed) but I do like that this play set folds up for play at a friends house or just for storage when play time is over.
