Media Station was working with an external animation studio in Chicago, but the quality of the work was astronomically poor. The biggest problem, Hinklin said, was the animation. “I do mention Barbie as Rapunzel to people because it was such a horrendous mess when I took it over,” Hinklin tells me. That was only the beginning of the team’s woes. Budgets on a Disney animated storybook would range from $US1.5 million to $US2 million, whereas the budget for Barbie as Rapunzel was a mere $US500,000. Barbie as Rapunzel was a significantly lower budget project than Media Station were accustomed to. But this precious, bizarre game that altered the course of my creative life? Having spent an hour on Zoom with Aaron, it sounds like it was an honest-to-God nightmare. I understand that every production is challenging! Making a game is a ridiculous venture for all involved. I’ve produced my own slate of video games. “No offence to your article, but Barbie as Rapunzel is probably the worst title we did! So everyone is like, ‘Why is she doing Barbie as Rapunzel?’” Before we dove into the development process, Aaron tells me about a Facebook group of former Media Station employees where he’d posted that I was working on this story. To find out, Woll, my hero (we’re getting to that) tells me I need to talk to Aaron Hinklin, who was a producer at Media Station. They were the storybook experts! What could go wrong? The team were pretty cutting edge for their time, having developed proprietary tools to improve the animation quality and speed of development specifically for this flavour of educational game. Mattel Media outsourced their game development, hiring Media Station - a small team in Ann Arbour responsible for the Disney Animated Storybooks - to work on Barbie as Rapunzel. Now that the ball was well and truly rolling for Mattel Media, the team decided to make a Barbie CD-ROM, in the style of the highly successful animated storybooks of the era.
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