To some it would be a dream home, albeit a slightly kitsch one. To others it resembles a (very pink) house of horrors that has no place in a modern city.
On Thursday , the first life-sized Barbie house to be unveiled in Europe is opened in Berlin and will have to be guarded by police after feminist groups and leftwing activists said they would picket the plush plastic villa, calling it "sexist propaganda".
Built on a slice of industrial wasteland sandwiched between a railway and communist housing blocks in north-east Berlin, for €15 (£13) young Barbie fans can explore 2500 square metres (26,900 square feet) of the iconic doll's realm. They can try on her clothes, bake cup cakes in her kitchen, stroll along her catwalk, even hang out in her living room. Electronic armbands and LED touchscreens are meant to enhance the experience, say organisers, who have described it as a "unique, life-size and interactive installation that brings the world famous Barbie toy house alive".
"The Barbie Dreamhouse is a culmination of everything that the toy industry has managed to do with the colour pink in the past 20 years," said Stevie Schmiedel, a British born academic and founder of the German-arm of the protest group Pinkstinks which campaigns against the promotion of gender roles and colour codes in children's toys and advertising. Schmiedel will be one of the protest leaders on Thursday . "Pink now stands for seduction, cuteness, large eyes with long eyelashes and above all everything to do with external appearance," she told Deutschlandradio Kultur.
Another protest group, an off-shoot of the leftwing Die Linke party is calling itself "Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse" in a nod to the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement. It has attracted almost 2000 supporters since its launch in March when the Dreamhouse plans were first announced.
Its organisers say that Barbie is the wrong role model for young girls. "It's a real pity that the vast majority of little girls play with a doll that if she were real, would be anorexic and whose life would be focused on waiting for Ken in the car," said Michael Koschitzki, the group's leader.
His comments refer to a 2009 study carried out by doctors in Cologne who said they had put Barbie through a health check and concluded that "were the young woman a human being she would be unable to lead a normal life based on her proportions. She would not only be unable to breathe properly, she would suffer from the results of a foot misalignment, spinal disc herniation and she would also be infertile".
Mattel the US Barbie manufacturer insists it has modernised the doll's image, creating presidential candidate versions, brain surgeons, and even an Angela Merkel look-alike.
Philipp Lengsfeld who is campaigning for the Christian Democrats party in the Berlin district of Mitte where the house is located, said it was to be welcomed because of the "huge numbers" of tourists it would attract. "The protest is an expression of the suburban narrow-mindedness of radical leftwingers," he said. "It is aggressive intolerance to which one should not give in".
After its Berlin debut, the house will go on a tour of other European cities from the end of August. Earlier this month the world's first Barbie Dreamhouse opened in Florida.