Mattel are doing a social media treasure hunt in four US cities starting today. Clues will be posted on Twitter & Foursquare and if you can find Barbie’s ’street team’ in their secret location, and show them a Foursquare login for their current location or ’something pink’ you win a Barbie video doll worth $50.

Now I don’t know the ins and outs of this social media campaign but a few practical problems seem apparent. To start with, it won’t be the world’s actual Barbie fans, aged 5 to 8 running around with air tickets and iphone on their own –  they’re going to have to bring an adult.

OK so it’s down to mum to make it happen – a tech savvy mum at that. But what smart mum would take their daughter on a Barbie hunt across the city knowing only one Barbie is available in each location. The inevitable tears of disappointment, not to mention exhaustion would mean she’d have to buy her one anyway and presumably they’re not in the shops yet so she can’t.

And if by steely ambition you did manage to get there first by dragging your child across six lanes of traffic, eyes glued to your maps app, why would you then bother to check in on Foursquare if you’re standing in front of the ’street team’ anyway?

So if the smart phoned parents won’t go for it, maybe it’s a publicity stunt, pure and simple, in a format fast becoming a geo-locational social media standard – the treasure hunt. Problem is, if the hunt doesn’t really make sense, all the media you hope might write about it may also start to mock and scoff a bit.

And then you may attract the more extreme comments like this one at the bottom of the ClickZ source for this blog: