The new Dora Explorer Girl has come out of the shadows.

When Mattel released a silhouette image of a more mature Dora the Explorer in March, it sparked an outcry from moms who loved the tomboyish cartoon toddler who always taught great lessons about friendship, problem-solving and adventure.

The reaction was not what Mattel executives had expected.

“We thought it would be a mystery and this would be a great way to give a sneak peek,” said Gina Sirard, a marketing vice president for Mattel. “We never imagined the firestorm that followed.”

The reason for that first silhouette was simple: Mattel was still designing the character’s look as a tween, and her face, hair and clothes were still in development. But some parents saw something much more sinister: a sexing up of the beloved Hispanic character from the Nickelodeon preschooler show “Dora the Explorer.”

The final version of the doll, unveiled Wednesday, showed parents probably have nothing to fear. The tween-age Dora wears a tunic and leggings and appears very wholesome in her looks and adventures.

“Throughout the years, we’ve heard from moms, ‘My child is getting a little bit older, she’s 5 now; and I love Dora; she’s so wholesome and so inspirational,’ and it got us thinking how can we age Dora up to make her cool enough for the older girl, 5 to 9 years old, and still have all those wholesome qualities she has now,” Sirard said Thursday during a phone interview.

About 2½ years ago, Mattel started toying with the idea of creating an older Dora. Then the designers and programmers set out to create a new kind of interactive toy that could live in an online world while incorporating the kinds of make-believe play their research shows girls love.

“When you think of what girls are doing in that age range, they are gaming online, they are buying Webkinz as well as fashion-style play, and so if we mixed all of those things together, what could we create that would be appealing to them?” Sirard said.

The designers “built prototype after prototype that we reviewed and improved upon,” said Mark Zeller, Mattel vice president of research and development.

And they got feedback from moms and children every step of the way.

“We used storyboards to walk them through the online play,” Zeller said. “Then when we got to the Web site, we tested it to make sure the games were age-appropriate and not frustrating.” (See kids’ reactions.)
The Dora Explorer Girl and her friends are plastic dolls that girls can dress up and accessorize. But they also live in an online world at www.doralinks.com.

Plug the doll into a computer via a USB connection and the real fun begins. If the user changes Dora’s appearance online, the doll attached to the computer also changes appearance. Her hair will grow or shorten, her eyes will change color, and she will talk to you about what she did in the online world, such as solving mysteries, volunteering at a pet clinic or cleaning up a beach.

“We wanted to bring something new. We wanted to incorporate online game play, but we wanted to create a two-way communication with the doll,” Zeller said.

“We wanted to make sure the mysteries were interesting enough for girls, and moms really appreciated the message in them: cleaning up the environment, going to a charity ball. This is the perfect solution to what we were hearing in research,” Sirard said.

The Dora Links Fashion Doll costs about $60 and is sold at most major stores and retail Web sites, including Walmart, Target, Toys R Us and Amazon.com.

Check out Dora’s online world here.