Barbie's ditching her life in Malibu after residing in the glitzy California seaside town since 1971. 

It may be a long overdue move. After all, there's something, well, dated about Malibu, which was a byword for California-style living in the 1970s and 1980s, inspiring a 1983 television movie starring Susan Dey of the 1970s sitcom "The Partridge Family" and the Malibu sedan from Chevrolet. 

Like Malibu's connotations, Barbie's also dealing with age. Sales of the iconic doll fell 4% in the fourth quarter, Mattel (MAT) said on Friday. That marked the third quarterly decline in 2012. 

Mattel and other toymakers are suffering from an economy that's still recovering from the recession and kids who increasingly would rather play "Angry Birds" on their parents' iPhones than with a physical toy.

 

If you haven't been on eBay (EBAY) in a while, allow it to reintroduce itself.

The auctions, the last-minute bids and online yard sales are largely gone. In its place is an e-commerce marketplace bolstering itself to compete with Amazon.com (AMZN), beefing up its PayPal mobile payments branch to help retailers snag an increasingly mobile market and a revenue dynamo that was once on its way to becoming a dot-com relic.

Fortune's JP Mangalindan recently detailed eBay's resurgence in depth, but the company's numbers tell the short-form version of the story.

Last year, eBay posted $14.1 billion in revenue, up 21% from a year earlier. Its payments business, anchored by PayPal, grew 26% to $5.6 billion in revenue.

 

Who do casual dining chains think they're fooling by sprinkling low-cal options into their calorie-laden menus? America, apparently.

As overall business at casual dining chains has decreased since 2006, the amount of low-calorie food consumed at these strip-mall eateries has skyrocketed, according to a report released Thursday by the Hudson Institute.

The group set the bar at 500 calories for a sandwich or entree, 150 calories for a side, appetizer or dessert and 50 calories for a beverage and found that low-calorie items outperformed less healthy items in 17 of the 21 restaurant chains surveyed.

The group used data from market research firm NPD Group and industry magazine Nation's Restaurant News to reach its conclusions and found its proof on the average plate.

 

Disney (DIS) shares have recently gone into hyperspace after the company announced plans for new "Star Wars" films. Wannabe Jedi Knights, though, need to be patient.

While the world's largest entertainment company expects to release J.J. Abrams' "Star Wars: Episode VII" in 2015, the Force is not as strong with two other films that Disney CEO Robert Iger has said are in the works. According to Deadline.com, many questions remain about these pictures, such as when the films will debut and what they will be about. 

If acting doesn't work out, 16-year-old actress Rachel Fox apparently has a lucrative side business that's panning out: playing the stock market. 

Fox has a blog and creates video episodes called "Fox on Stocks" (a nod to the Dr. Seuss picture-book classic "Fox in Socks?") in which she aims to teach others how to trade stocks. She claims she earns more than 64% on her investments per year. 

"I'm best known to the world for playing roles like evil Kayla Scavo on 'Desperate Housewives'," she said in her latest video blog, presumably taped before she turned 16. "I'm one of the only 15-year-old stock-trading actresses around." Um, there are others? 

 

Updated at 1:39 p.m.

If there's any good news about the blizzard expected to wallop New England this weekend, it's this: The region's ski resorts could rebound from one of the worst seasons in years.

Last year, the $6 billion ski industry had its worst year since 1991 because of the unusually mild winter in most parts of the country. Snowy weather puts people in the mood to ski and snowboard, while warmer spring-like weather does not.  

The government's identified one of the tobacco industry's key demographics -- and cigarette makers would be wise to nod, say "that's nice" and walk away.

According to a report issued Tuesday by both the Centers of Disease Control and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, people with mental illness are 70% more likely to smoke than those without. The report shows that 36% of adults with mental illness smoke, compared to just 21% of people without mental illness.

There are about 46 million adults with mental illness in the United States. According to the report, those same adults are less likely to quit smoking once they've started and consume nearly a third of the cigarettes sold in the U.S.

 

The multibillion-dollar marijuana industry has become a hotbed of union organizing.

According to Reuters, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the largest retail union, has been bombarded with requests from dispensary workers to join since the election. "I can't keep up," Dan Rush, who heads the union's cannabis division, tells the news service.

The stakes couldn't be higher. As CNBC recently pointed out, estimates of the size of the burgeoning marijuana industry range from $10 billion to $120 billion.

The pro-marijuana group NORML calls pot the third-most-popular recreational drug in the U.S., ranking behind alcohol and tobacco. Nearly 100 million people have admitted to partaking. Not surprisingly, union organizers are interested in the industry, which according to one estimate could employ 100,000 people in California alone.