It's a bad day in a bad year for Barbie.

Mattel said Wednesday that sales of the iconic toy fell 12% in the three months through June 30 — the fourth straight quarterly decline. But it wasn't a doll problem: Mattel's American Girl and the even bigger, goth-inspired Monster High dolls hit it out of the park, as has been the pattern for the past year and a half.

Barbie has been losing ground recently in part due to the growing success of the other dolls — watch the throne, Regina George — and Mattel's decision to shift certain promotions to the back half of the year to snap up holiday shoppers, CEO Bryan Stockton said today on a conference call with analysts. Monster High, introduced in 2010, is now a $1 billion brand and the world's second-most popular doll, while American Girl is a $600 million name, according to the company.

That's right: Monster High dolls, which feature ghoulish makeup and hair in shades of pink and blue, and American Girl, the wholesome, dream-achieving, "every girl" dolls, are outpacing sales of the perfectly manicured, blonde-haired, blue-eyed bombshell. Talk about a cultural shift.

In Barbie's defense, it's a lot easier to build new brands than juice similar growth out of a doll that turned 54 in March. And she still generates about $1.3 billion a year.

But the key difference that is steering sales toward Monster High and American Girl and away from Barbie seems to be a broader shift in the culture. The new dolls offer something "very personal" to children, with storylines that accompany each doll, and a variety of physical characteristics instead of a static appearance, Morningstar analyst Jaime Katz said.

"There's only one character in Barbie, and it's Barbie, unless you really want to draw straws and say Skipper," Katz, who has the equivalent of a "hold" on Mattel shares, said. "There's nothing that's particularly relatable to young people that want to do these individualistic things."