Come on, vamanos! Marketers shouldn't mess with Dora

You'd think they'd have learned something after the New Coke mess. But new generations of marketers seem doomed to repeat the same mistake and suffer the predictable consequences: Mess with a beloved brand and get your head handed to you on a plate.

Nickelodeon and Mattel teamed up to create new doll from the hugely popular Dora the Explorer cartoon series, a lightly bi-lingual show aimed at pre-schoolers. But in order to make her appeal to older girls (meaning 8-year-olds), they put Dora through the most exciting adventure of her life: They made her 'tween.

No longer an asexual little girl, the proposed 'tween Dora doll has longer, more feminine hair, jewelry, and wears a tunic over leggings. She's not exactly a Bratz doll, with bedroom eyes and slutty outfits, but her more grown up incarnation incurred the wrath of moms everywhere, much to the professed shock of marketing execs at Nickelodeon and Mattel.

"I think there was just a misconception in terms of where we were going with this," Gina Sirard, vice president of marketing at Mattel, told reporters. "Pretty much the moms who are petitioning aging Dora up certainly don't understand. ... I think they're going to be pleasantly happy once this is available in October, and once they understand this certainly isn't what they are conjuring up."