Many students know who Dora the Explorer is, but how many would recognize her if they saw her all grown up?

According to a March 17 MSNBC article, Dora has traded the backpack for longer legs and longer hair.

Parents haven’t been very happy with the new image, saying it did not match her previous adventurous, outdoor spirit, according to the article.

The original Dora show, which will still continue to air, promotes a healthy, adventurous lifestyle as well as teaching children some limited Spanish along with universal human values.

Nickelodeon intends to keep old Dora’s environmental and wildlife-related issues, which is a good thing.

A problem could arise if girls start to emulate the new, older image of Dora and if her “adventures” change. Hopefully Mattel will keep the values and teachings of the original Dora.

According to the article, Dora will now be accompanied by four other girls. Even though she will have other human characters to interact with, hopefully these girls won’t fall under the same image as Bratz or Barbie dolls by creating a negative stereotype of girls in their tweens and their physical appearance. The new image of Dora seems to fall along these same lines, so Nickelodeon needs to be a lot more careful with her message compared to the original show.

It’s understandable that due to market reasons, Nickelodeon has to keep up with other competing older images that younger children emulate, such as the Jonas Brothers or Hannah Montana. But the best approach would have been to keep the essence of the young Dora, as children that grew up with the show will look up to real humans more than a cartoon when they reach tween age.

Let’s just hope cartoonists keep Dora true to herself and to her original image, because the network is walking a fine line of appearance versus message.