One of the items on my daughter’s Christmas wish list is the Barbie Doll’d Up Nails B-Nails Digital Nail Printer. The toy is a Toys R US exclusive and is being offered at a price tag of $149.99. We had heard they were having a Demo at our local Toys R US and decided to head on over and try it out. Before I write about the review of the product I would like to bring my readers up to speed if they are unfamiliar with this product.

The Barbie Doll’d Up Nails B-Nails Digital Nail Printer is a printer that allows you to create, customize, and print designs on your nails right at home. The printer comes with software that has over 1000 designs already preloaded. You also have the option to add custom designs including photos from your camera.

How it Works:
The Barbie Doll’d Up Nails B-Nails Digital Nail Printer plugs into your computer and using the software that comes with the Barbie printer your child puts their fingernail into the printer and then lines it up in the window on the screen. The printer contains a little camera inside that shows your nail on the screen. You take a picture of you nail then pick which design you would like on the nail. You then place your nail back in the printer and print.

Check out this video for a Demo:

Now to the Review:
Let me start by saying I was not asked or paid to write this review. My daughter wants this for Christmas and we went to the demonstration. I wanted to share my personal experience with the product to help buyers make an informed buying decision. I am dedicated to providing only accurate and truthful reviews.

So my daughter and I showed up at the very end of the demo time and there were a whole line of girls left to test out this product. My daughter waited in line as I watched the other girls have their nails done. Most of the little girls were around 4-6 years old. My daughter is 10 years old. The lady running the demo painted each girls nail of choice with the white base coat included. I did find out you can use any color you have available. It does not have to be the white color. As a matter of fact the white actually is not of a high quality and looks kind of clumpy and streaky on your nail. One of the ladies had done a zebra print pattern on pink nails and it looked much better.

Once the white coat was dry she painted each girls nail with a special clear coat that makes the ink stick to your nail. This is mandatory for it to work properly so keep in mind when you run out you will need to reorder from Mattel. Ink refill kits run about $10 and the nail polish kit will cost you about $30 according to the Mattel rep. You will also have to order from the customer service number in the directions for now because it is not available in stores.

Then each child placed their finger in the little hole of the printer where the camera is. The lady doing the demo took a picture of the nail. The one thing I realized very quickly this is a 2 person project. The person having their nails done as well as a helper to operate the computer and take the pictures. The other thing that stood out was this is not made for young children. I would say it would work great for tweens. The manufacturer recommended age is 8+. When the picture was taken I did notice there was delay in the camera. The rep assured me that this was because it was hooked up to the busy network of the Toys R Us store and that was not normally the case.

After the picture of the nail was taken each child got to choose their design. Even though it is a Barbie product there are only a few designs with the actual Barbie logo on it. They had over 1000 preloaded designs to choose from! I must say the designs were all very cute and the girls loved them. Another feature that the girls seemed to like was you could change the color of a design. For example if the design had pink hearts but you wanted purple you can change them to your desired color.

After their design was chosen the girls then put their finger back in the printer and lined up their nail in the nail grid. The rep said well you need to actually move it below the nail grid which made no sense but she said it was not lining up correctly. She explained in the beginning you align the camera and this had not been done before the demo which I thought should have been to better demonstrate it. You then hit the print button on the printer. Again the second person comes in handy for this task. The printer then prints the design on the nail. The little girls in front of us said they could not even feel the printing. Now remember I said most of the girls in front of me were 4-6 years old and the recommended age was 8? Part of the reason was easily seen in the results on those girls. Their nails were not big enough. The ink overlapped onto the skin. This is washable with soap and water. You then seal your nail with a clear top coat.
None-the-less the little girls were all ecstatic with the results and really wanted the product. I wanted to also note that there was another girl there who was about 12 years old and the printing came out perfect on her nail size. I could see this as being very time consuming to do all 10 nails as the process for 1 nail was quite tedious. I would imagine once you got the hang of the steps it would go by much quicker. Also I would like to note the ink cartridge should last for about 1000 prints. So roughly 100 sets of nails.

So then came my daughters turn. We were the last one for the day. We went through all the steps and then went to print the pattern and it acted like it was printing but nothing showed up on the nail. The rep explained you do have to clean the cartridge every so often which is a selection in the software that you click and it does so by itself. So we waited a few minutes and tried again. Again nothing. So my daughter was a bit disappointed that she never got to try the machine.

They had been running this demonstration for over 3 hours and printed who knows how many girls nails. In all fairness, this product is not made for continuous commercial use but for home use. Please keep in mind this product was being used in an application (demonstration) it is not intended for if making your buying decision based on my review.

Giving Mattel the benefit of the doubt that the negative points in the above review are only because they were using it in an unintended application, I would rate the Barbie Doll’d Up Nails B-Nails Digital Nail Printer a 4 out of 5. I would love to hear in the comments section below your experiences with this product.

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