Dora's pipsqueak voice and repetition of catchy words might have parents going a little nutty, but not enough to keep them from turning the brand into a cash-generating machine. From global live tours to video games and movies to backpacks and sippy cups, her sizable head and bowl haircut are plastered on every conceivable kind of merchandise. Nickelodeon estimates she's generated more than $11 billion in retail sales.
"Dora isn't just a show; she's DVDs, clothes, lunchboxes," said Karen Sternheimer, an associate professor of sociology at USC and author of "It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children." "Nickelodeon has been very savvy about getting their characters into kids' lives through a number of different platforms. They've taken branding to another level."
That level was tested last year when Viacom, the parent of Nickelodeon, partnered with Mattel to release the Dora Links doll, an older version of the intrepid girl. A "teaser" silhouette featuring a girl with long, flowing hair and a more angular figure circulated on the Web and had many parents in an uproar over her sexualization — a petition was launched by two child psychologists. "What's next? Dora the fashionista with stylish purse and stilettos?" they wondered. The doll made its way to store shelves anyway.
But it wouldn't be the only controversy the animated youngster would face; next, her life and immigration status would be scrutinized.
Several doctored mug shots — one depicting a battered and bruised Dora accused of illegally crossing the border — began circulating the Web earlier this year after passage of Arizona's controversial immigration law.
"There's a part of me that's almost like her mom," Walsh Valdes said, recalling the moment she saw the image. "I said, 'Why would they drag her into this?' It seemed totally inappropriate.... I feel very territorial about her, so when I see stuff like that, it's hard for me to laugh."
Dora's origins
She's a global star, but Dora has always been purposely a bit indistinct.
Brown Johnson, the Nickelodeon executive responsible for developing the program, said the thinking was: "If Dora wasn't from a specific country, more people could identify with her. We wanted the broadest possible audience for her, so where she was from was not important."
Even after her transformation from a cottontail to a girl, Dora was not envisioned as being Latina. Her original name was Tess. The idea for an ethnic rebirth sprang after Johnson attended an industry conference during which the underrepresentation of Latinos in media was discussed.
The 2000 census showed that Latino communities were the nation's fastest growing — and the biggest five-year Latino age group is infants to preschoolers. Yet data have long shown that Latinos are underrepresented in prime-time TV: UCLA research found that 4% of prime-time's regular characters in 2004 were Latino, while Latinos make up about 15% of the U.S. population.
For years, the main source for children's multicultural TV was PBS' "Sesame Street." The ensemble show has a melting pot of characters and has featured a Puerto Rican family and a Mexican monster named Rosita. Dora's "success really reflects a change in the media environment for children over the years," Sternheimer said. "It's a great reflection of the shifting multicultural nature of our society."
Since "Dora," the children's TV landscape has embraced diversity. PBS Kids revamped "Dragon Tales" in 2005 to include Enrique, who is Colombian. "Jay Jay the Jet Plane" has added a bilingual plane named Lina. "Dora" also launched a spinoff, "Go Diego Go," starring Dora's 8-year-old cousin, in 2005. It's one of Nickelodeon's top-performing shows.
More than 300 people work to create "Dora the Explorer": More than a dozen in New York work on the writing, research and music; an additional 50 or so are at the Nicktoons animation studio in Burbank; and there's a crew of about 250 in Korea doing the full animation and coloring. Each show takes roughly a year to produce.
Schoolteachers, sociologists and historians are all brought in to advise on "Dora" episodes. More than 20 cultural consultants have worked on the show to make Dora's world reflect a pan-Latino culture that's not just tortillas and mariachi music, Johnson said. "It was important for us that Dora represented the idea that being multicultural was super cool," she said.
Cortés, who's serves as a cultural consultant on the show, said not giving Dora a specific heritage made that idea a reality. "Not knowing where she was from allowed her to be a source of pride for anyone of Latino background," he said. "She's more relatable if you don't peg her down."
But is such ambiguity a good thing?
