Barbie is coming to Shanghai in a big way.

U.S. toy manufacturer Mattel is getting ready to open an eight-story Barbie store, the largest in the world, in Shanghai.

The store will open early in March to coincide with Barbie’s 50th anniversary (Does she have wrinkles yet?). Barbies have only been on sale in China for eight years. And the dolls, known here as “ba-bi-wa-wa,” are not that widely known yet.

Click here for a CCTV English language news clip of the store. And here for a Time magazine article about it. The following is an excerpt from Time:

To get a sense of just how far Mattel is deviating from script requires a trip to the retail district in downtown Shanghai. There, on March 6, the company plans to open a 38,000-sq.-ft. (3,500 sq m) House of Barbie — the first of its kind in the world. This is nothing like the Main Street toy shop of yesterday. To enter the eight-story showpiece space, customers pass through a pink neon-lit tube, where the prerecorded sound of giggling girls grows progressively — some might say demonically — louder. After registering for a Barbie passport, visitors can get their hair and nails done at a spa and shop for makeup, accessories and even couture. Vera Wang is on board; she designed a $15,000 human-sized Barbie wedding dress to be sold exclusively at the Shanghai store. In a sleek design center, girls can use computers to sketch out their own Barbie fashions, and on another floor they can model them by walking a runway in Barbie clothing. At night, one of the store's two restaurants becomes a hip bar, complete with karaoke, a DJ and pink martinis. Says Hayes Zhou, food-and-beverage manager at Barbie Shanghai: "Barbies want to talk to Kens. You have to have a place for that."

With adult clothing, pricey collector's dolls and a pickup bar, the store sends a clear signal that Mattel intends to seduce an older demographic. This isn't as crazy as it may seem. In Asia, the Barbie brand is not deeply entrenched, so grown-ups are less likely to automatically dismiss it as kids' stuff. Besides, Asians don't necessarily put away childish things as they age. Collecting toys such as Hello Kitty merchandise well into adulthood is common. "Asian culture loves cute," says Richard Dickson, general manager of the Barbie brand. "They're much more comfortable with character art as part of fashion.”

The idea that Mattel thinks it can sell Barbies to older women has echo in this CCTV story:

Gene Murtha, vice president of Int'l Business Development, Mattel Inc., said, "What we found in China that was different than any place else was that there are other generations that respond to it as well. So there are essentially four generations that are compressed in that never had the chance to experience Barbie as they grew up."